illllllliiiiilii 


esus 


s:nd  the 


C1V1L1ZOT10N  OF  Tolky 


LEICHTON 


LIBRARY 

OF  THE 

University  of  California, 

Class 


JESUS   CHRIST 

AND  THE 

CIVILIZATION    OF   TO-DAY 


WORKS  BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 

TYPICAL  MODERN  CONCEPTIONS  OF  GOD  — With 
A  Constructive  Essay.    1901. 

PERSONALITY    AND    REALITY  —  A    Treatise    of 
Metaphysics.    (In  preparation.) 


JESUS  CHRIST 

AND   THE 

CIVILIZATION  OF  TO-DAY 

THE   ETHICAL    TEACHING    OF    JESUS 

CONSIDERED    IN    ITS    BEARINGS 

ON  THE  MORAL  FOUNDATIONS 

OF  MODERN   CULTURE 


BY 


JOSEPH   ALEXANDER   LEIGHTON,  Ph.D. 

PROFESSOR  OF  PHILOSOPHY  AND  PSYCHOLOGY 
IN  HOBART  COLLEGE 


THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

LONDON :  MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Ltd. 
1907 

AH  rights  reserved 


Copyright,  1907, 
By  the  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.    Published  May,  1907. 


^^*"'fiAf 


NorfaoDtJ  13t«8 

J.  8.  Gushing  &  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 

Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


MY   DEAR  WIFE 

"Das  ewige  Weibliche 
Zieht  uns  hinan  " 


182304 


PREFATORY  NOTE 

As  indicated  by  the  title,  the  scope  of  this  work 
is  limited  to  a  consideration  of  the  ethical  teach- 
ings of  Jesus  Christ  in  their  bearings  on  the  spirit- 
ual life  of  civilization.  No  account  is  taken  of  the 
external  events  of  Christ's  life  or  of  his  deeds, 
except  in  so  far  as  has  seemed  necessary  to  inter- 
pret the  meaning  and  application  of  his  teaching. 
No  questions  of  dogmatic  theology  are  directly 
considered,  nor,  on  the  other  hand,  does  the  author 
mean  to  imply  that  there  may  not  be  aspects  of 
that  life,  of  deep  significance  for  the  individual 
and  the  church,  that  lie  beyond  the  purview  of 
the  present  work.  He  is  simply  concerned  here 
with  ideas  that  seem  to  him  to  be  of  broad  and 
primary  significance  for  the  entire  moral  founda- 
tions of  western  culture.  He  has  felt  compelled 
to  take  some  account  of  eastern  culture,  since  the 
two  are  now  meeting  in  the  world-arena.  He  has 
done  this  with  diffidence,  since  his  knowledge  of 
the  East  is  purely  literary. 

The  primary  aim  of  the  work  is  practical,  and 
it  is  addressed  to  all  intelligent  persons  who  are 
honestly  and  open-mindedly  seeking  to  determine 
the  relation  of  the  words  of  the  great  Master  of 
Life  and  Religion  to  their  own  lives  and  to  the 


Vlll  PREFATORY   NOTE 

complex  and  confused  life  of  contemporary  civil- 
ization. Hence,  technical  discussions  in  biblical 
criticism  and  in  philosophy  have  been,  so  far  as 
possible,  avoided.  Philosophical  questions  have 
been  dealt  with  as  briefly  and  clearly  as  possible. 
If  the  style  of  treatment  may  savour,  to  the 
specialist,  of  dogmatism,  the  author's  reply  is  that 
he  has  threshed  out,  to  the  best  of  his  ability, 
questions  at  issue  in  the  philosophy  of  mind  in  a 
forthcoming  work.  To  the  specialist  in  New 
Testament  criticism  and  theology  the  author  would 
say  further  that,  while  he  has  avoided  burdening 
a  work  of  popular  character  with  references,  he 
has  considered  in  great  part  the  recent  literature 
both  German  and  English. 

But  the  writer's  wish  will  be  satisfied  if  some 
intelligent  seekers  after  truth  in  matters  of  conduct 
and  life  are  led  to  a  fuller  appreciation  of  the 
present  significance  of  the  teaching  of  Him  whose 
words  are  "  Spirit  and  Life." 

Geneva,  New  York, 
January  lo,  1907. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Prefatory  Note vii 


CHAPTER  I 
Purpose  and  Standpoint  of  the  Present  Work 

CHAPTER   n 
Nature  and  Human  Nature 


CHAPTER  in 
The  Heart  of  Man 35 

CHAPTER  IV 
The  Conduct  of  the  Individual  Life   ...      56 

CHAPTER  V 
The  Conduct  of  the  Social  Life  ....      89 

CHAPTER  VI 
The  Imperfections  of  Life 120 

CHAPTER  VII 

The  Idea  of  God 139 

(i)  The  Idea  of  God  in  General     ....  139 

(2)  Jesus'  Idea  of  God 150 

(3)  The  Problem  of  Evil 157 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER   VIII 


PAGE 


The  Influence  of  Jesus'  Teaching  and  of  Other 

Ethical  Systems i66 

CHAPTER   IX 

Jesus  Christ  and  Other  Founders  of  Religions  179 

(i)  Personality  and  the  History  of  Religion  .         .  179 

(2)  Jesus,  Mohammed,  and  Buddha  in  History       .  185 

CHAPTER  X 
The  Final  Significance  of  the  Personality  of 

Jesus  Christ 215 

APPENDIX.     Ethics  and  Eschatology          .        .  225 
INDEX  TO  NAMES  AND  SUBJECTS    .         .        .243 

INDEX   TO   TEXTS 247 


JESUS   CHRIST 

AND  THE 

CIVILIZATION   OF  TO-DAY 


JESUS  CHRIST  AND 
THE  CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

CHAPTER  I 

INTRODUCTORY  :     PURPOSE  AND  STANDPOINT  OF  THE 
PRESENT  WORK 

The  aim  of  the  following  work  is  to  offer  an  in- 
terpretation of  the  fundamental  ethical  principles 
of  Jesus  in  their  bearing  on  the  problems  of  social  life 
and  individual  destiny  as  these  present  themselves 
to  the  men  of  to-day.  In  estimating  the  meaning 
and  value  of  any  historical  phenomenon  we  neces- 
sarily begin  with  the  life,  experience,  and  ideas  of 
to-day.  The  past  only  gains  meaning  and  worth  for 
us  as  we  bring  it  into  living  filiation  and  continuity 
with  the  present.  This  is  even  more  deeply  true  of 
moral  and  spiritual  history  than  of  political  and 
economic  history.  It  seems  to  the  present  writer 
that  no  better  test  can  be  made  of  the  permanent 
worth  of  the  gospel  of  Jesus  than  that  of  deter- 
mining how  it  bears  on  the  moral  and  spiritual  prob- 
lems of  life  to-day.  For  the  gospel  is  life,  not  theory. 
Although  it  involves  theoretical  propositions,  it  does 
not  in  itself  consist  primarily  of  theoretical  propo- 
sitions.   The  gospel  of  Jesus  is  a  way  of  conduct,  an 

B  I 


2       JESUS    CHRIST    AND    CIVILIZATION   OF    TO-DAY 

attitude  of  soul  or  spirit,  and  as  such  it  must  be 
judged. 

The  aim  of  the  present  work,  then,  is  twofold.  It 
seeks  to  discover  the  fundamental  ethical  needs  of 
contemporary  life,  to  determine  by  what  principles 
of  conduct  the  spiritual  character  of  man  and  of 
civilization  may  be  best  preserved  and  developed. 
And  it  seeks  to  determine  the  bearings  of  Jesus' 
ethical  teaching  on  this  spiritual  Ufe  of  to-day. 

I  have  attempted  to  bring  out  only  the  fundamental 
principles  of  Jesus'  teaching,  in  their  relation  to 
contemporary  tendencies  of  conduct  and  of  ethical 
thought.  The  application  in  detail  must  be  left 
to  the  reader.  And  here  I  beheve  I  am  in  accord 
with  Jesus'  own  method.  Although  he  teaches  by 
parables  and  single  instances  as  well  as  by  explicitly 
formulated  principles,  what  he  conveys  is  in  every 
case  a  dynamic  principle  or  spiritual  ideal  of  conduct. 
The  gospel  is  no  system  of  casuistry,  no  network 
of  minute  and  iron-bound  prescriptions.  Jesus 
supplies  the  quickening  leaven ;  but  it  is  an  essential 
feature  of  his  ethical  teaching  that  the  individual 
shall  in  each  specific  and  concrete  case  direct  his 
own  actions  by  conscious  and  free  thought  and  de- 
cision in  the  light  of  the  principles  laid  down.  The 
active  participation  of  the  whole  personality  is  fun- 
damental to  right  living  as  Jesus  sees  it. 

The  traditional  ethics  of  Christian  civilization  are 
on  trial  to-day.  No  doubt  the  mass  of  men  still  as- 
sume their  validity  and  pay  them  the  tribute  of  at  least 


PURPOSE    OF    THE    PRESENT    WORK  3 

a  theoretical  recognition.  But  the  conduct  of  men  is 
in  part  actually  guided  by  widely  different  motives 
and  the  authority  of  other  than  Christian  principles 
begins  to  be  boldly  announced  in  some  quarters. 
When  Nietzsche  proclaims  the  absolute  supremacy  of 
the  stronger  and  more  intelHgent,  exceptional  indi- 
vidual, the  "  Over-man,"  over  the  mass  of  his  fellows ; 
when  he  attacks  the  Christian  ideals  of  sympathy  and 
service  as  the  most  egregious  blunders  in  the  mat- 
ter of  conduct  that  man  has  ever  committed ;  when 
he  finds  in  the  assertion  of  the  authority  of  these  prin- 
ciples the  conspiracy  of  the  mass  of  weak  men  against 
the  few  strong;  of  the  "domesticated  human  animal" 
against  his  natural  and  rightful  lord,  the  exceptional  in- 
dividual, strong,  cunning,  and  dominant,  —  Nietzsche 
is  but  drawing  the  correct  ethical  consequences  that 
follow  from  the  exclusive  claim  that  the  Darwinian 
doctrine  of  evolution,  or  the  science  of  biology  in 
general,  is  able  to  yield  us  a  new  sufficient  and  sci- 
entific ethics.  And,  in  our  practical,  political,  and 
commercial  Ufe,  where  Nietzsche  has  never  been 
heard  of,  the  catchwords  of  biological  science  are 
frequently  employed  to  justify  political  oppression, 
industrial  and  civic  wrong-doing. 

We  are  told  that  the  conquest,  exploitation,  and 
subjection  of  weaker  and  less  enlightened  peoples 
by  the  culture-nations  of  Europe  and  America  is  the 
** natural,"  and  therefore  inevitable,  outcome  of  the 
"struggle  for  existence."  The  fittest  survive,  and 
the  weaker  must  go  to  the  wall.     So  it  is  in  nature, 


4     JESUS   CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

and  so  it  must  be  in  human  society,  we  are  told. 
The  ''trust,"  too,  is  a  product  of  "evolution"  and, 
if  it  crushes  out  competitors  here  and  there  by 
methods  which  the  old-fashioned  Christian  moral 
consciousness  revolts  against,  why  all  this  is  "  natu- 
ral "  and  "  inevitable  "  !  The  labor  union  often  seeks 
to  justify  intimidation  and  personal  violence  on  the 
same  grounds. 

If  men  in  business  and  in  poHtics  use  lying  and 
corruption,  fraud,  and  "graft,"  to  gain  their  ends, 
we  are  told  that  the  "machine"  is  a  necessary  politi- 
cal device  or  that  the  "system"  which  exists  must 
be  conformed  to  and  those  who  do  business  or  go  into 
poHtics  must  adopt  the  methods  that  have  been 
employed  and  that  have  actually  proved  successful. 
And,  in  truth,  our  fundamental  principle  of  ethics 
threatens  to  become  the  universal  doctrine  "that 
nothing  succeeds  Uke  success."  Now,  there  is 
no  system  of  morality  to  be  drawn  from  the  fact 
of  the  survival  0}  the  fittest  in  the  struggle  for  exist- 
ence. For  the  fittest  means  nothing  more  in  nature 
than  the  fact  that  certain  species  have  actually  sur- 
vived. The  fitness  or  goodness  which  consist  simply 
in  the  survival  value  indicated  by  the  power  of  ad- 
justment to  the  natural  environment  have  nothing 
to  do  with  moral  worth.  MoraHty  does  not  begin 
until  we  leave  the  realm  of  mere  brute  facts  and  judge 
in  terms  of  ideal  worth  or  value. 

The  naturahstic  tendencies,  to  which  I  have  briefly 
referred,  are  sufi&ciently  symptomatic  of  our  time. 


PURPOSE   OF   THE   PRESENT   WORK  5 

No  doubt,  traditional  Christian  ethics,  as  an  inherit- 
ance from  the  mediaeval  world,  drew  too  sharp 
an  antithesis  between  the  natural  and  the  spiritual. 
For  example,  the  assertion  of  the  higher  spiritual 
virtue  of  celibacy  over  the  married  state  was  a  great 
error.  The  separation  by  mediaeval  ethical  thought 
of  the  higher  spiritual  realm  from  the  sphere  of  com- 
mon human  activities  and  interests  in  family,  com- 
munity, state,  science,  and  art  set  up  a  mistaken 
dualism  that  had  serious  consequences  for  history, 
consequences  that  our  civilization  is  only  beginning 
to  recover  from.  Some  of  these  consequences  were 
—  the  vague  and  negative  meanings  attached  to 
spirituality  and  the  spiritual  life  in  many  quarters, 
the  tendency  to  ascribe  a  magical  efficacy  to  rites 
and  ceremonies  as  means  of  snatching  the  soul  from 
an  evil  world,  the  failure  of  the  churches  to  make 
themselves  effective  forces  in  the  evolution  of  con- 
temporary civilization,  their  failure  to  welcome 
and  to  sanctify  democracy  as  the  direct  consequence 
of  the  Master's  teaching,  and  gladly  to  meet  science 
and  scholarship  as  instruments  by  which  the  spirit 
leads  men  into  the  truth  that  makes  them  free.  We 
are  learning  better  to-day,  although  we  are  still 
prone  to  identify  heathen  and  mediaeval  motives 
and  principles  with  the  ethics  of  Jesus  himself. 

But,  under  the  influence  of  biological  philosophy, 
used  as  a  tool  to  justify  the  selfish  and  power-loving 
ruthless  instincts  of  the  natural  man,  modem  society 
swings  toward  the  other  extreme.     Our  civilization 


6     JESUS   CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

is  threatened  by  an  ethical  materiaUsm,  for  which 
there  are  no  hmits  of  acquisition  and  indulgence 
except  those  of  cunning  and  power.  The  ethical 
antithesis  now  stands  between  biological  egoism 
and  Christian  altruism.  Shall  individual  or  national 
success  be  constituted  the  sole  warrant  of  right,  or 
are  there  universal  ethical  principles  of  righteous- 
ness? Shall  the  individual  obey  without  stint  his 
own  selfish  desires,  shall  he  follow  v^thout  limit 
his  own  immediate  interests  regardless  of  the  well- 
being  of  others?  What  is  the  relation  of  the  indi- 
viduaPs  action  to  social  welfare  and  social  righteous- 
ness? And  back  of  this  antithesis  lies  the  more 
fundamental  question,  wherein  consists  the  true 
essence  of  the  individual  ?  Has  he  a  spiritual  being 
or  is  he  but  a  fleshly  tissue,  warmed  by  feeUng, 
lighted  up  by  consciousness,  and  aided  in  the  strug- 
gle to  gain  mere  life,  by  the  auxiUary  instrument  of 
reason?  Is  reason  but  a  tool  for  the  increase  of 
sensuous  pleasure,  and  the  diminution  of  pain? 

The  fundamental  problems  of  ethics  and  religion 
are,  in  a  final  analysis,  those  of  the  real  nature  and 
destiny  of  the  individual  man.  Our  ethical  prin- 
ciples must  in  the  last  resort  depend  upon  our  con- 
victions as  to  the  relation  of  the  human  self  to  the 
natural  order  or  cosmos,  and  upon  its  relation  to 
the  world  of  spiritual  values  and  ideals  which  have 
been  built  up  in  the  course  of  civilization  through 
the  teachings  and  activities  of  moral  and  religious 
leaders. 


PURPOSE   OF   THE   PRESENT   WORK  7 

If  the  ethics  of  traditional  Christianity  are  on  trial, 
this  means  that  the  most  important  spiritual  constit-  / 
uents  in  the  personal  and  social  Hfe  of  our  civiHza- 
tion  are  on  trial,  too.  And  in  this  critical  juncture 
we  must,  in  order  to  determine  anew  what  is  per- 
manent and  pertinent  in  Christianity  as  a  civiHzing 
and  ethical  force,  go  back  of  the  traditional  Chris- 
tian ethics,  which  is  intermingled  with  many  other 
elements,  to  the  ethics  of  the  founder.  For  the  ethical 
conceptions  that  began  to  prevail  in  the  church  from 
the  second  and  third  centuries  onward  (indeed,  one 
might  say  to  some  extent  from  the  latter  part  of  the 
first  century),  that  held  sway  during  the  Middle 
Ages,  and  are  still  by  many  identified  with  the  gospel, 
are  really  a  compound  of  Jesus'  teaching  with  that 
oriental  dualism  which  had  its  several  manifestations 
in  Zoroastrianism,  Manichaeism,   Mithraism,  etc.;* 

*  On  the  relations  of  Zoroastrianism  and  Primitive  Christianity 
see  two  articles  by  James  Mofifatt,  in  the  Hibbert  Journal,  Vol.  I., 
No.  4,  and  Vol.  II.,  No.  2 ;  on  Mithraism  see  the  little  work  by 
Franz  Cumont,  The  Mysteries  of  Mithra,  a  resum^  of  his  larger 
work  on  the  same  subject;  on  the  general  subject  see  A.  Harnack, 
History  of  Dogma,  Vol.  I.  (English  translation),  and  the  same 
writer's  The  Expansion  of  Christianity  in  the  First  Three  Cen- 
turies. On  the  subject  of  Persian  influence  on  Jewish  religion  in 
New  Testament  times  see  W.  Bousset,  Die  Religion  des  Juden- 
thums  im  Neutestamentlichen  Zeitalter,  Zweite  Auflage,  1906.  Of 
course,  as  one  leaves  Apostolic  Christianity  behind  and  goes 
forward  through  the  history  of  thought  and  practice  in  the 
second,  third,  and  fourth  centuries,  the  influence  of  this  oriental 
dualism  becomes  more  pronounced  in  Christian  thought  and 
practice.  Indeed,  the  same  is  true  of  purely  Hellenic  thought. 
How  much  more  dualistic  in  both  speculative  theory  and  in  prac- 


8     JESUS    CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

and  which  filtered  into  Greek  thought  through  the 
mysteries  and  through  later  Neoplatonism,  spread 
over  the  Roman  Empire,  cropped  out  even  in  the 
teachings  of  St.  Paul,  and,  through  the  influence  of 
St.  Augustine  and  his  successors,  left  its  powerful 
and  morbid  heritage  to  modem  theology,  and  even 
gained  a  speculative  outcrop  in  Descartes'  philosophy 
of  mind  and  body. 

The  absolute  metaphysical  dualism  of  mind  and 
body,  the  absolute  ethical  dualism  of  flesh  and 
spirit,  the  absolute  theological  dualism  of  God 
and  the  devil,  has  been  in  principle  overcome  by 
modem  thought.  What  remains  then  of  the  su- 
premacy of  the  spirit?  Is  the  latter  but  a  product 
of  natural  forces  ?  The  same  question  in  philosoph- 
ical form  becomes  this  —  is  the  mind  a  function  of 
the  bodily  organism?  And  in  theological  guise  — 
is  God  simply  the  order  of  physical  nature  ? 

I  am  convinced  that  true  and  permanently  valid 
answers  to  these  questions,  in  so  far  as  they  touch 
the  fundamental  problems  of  conduct  or  ethics,  will 
be  found  in  the  teachings  of  Jesus ;  and  it  is  in  the 
light  of  this  conviction  that  I  shall  herein  attempt  to 
set  forth  the  ethical  principles  of  the  Master  in  their 
bearing  on  the  ethical  or  spiritual  problems  of  con- 
temporary civilization,  and  more  especially,  of  the 

tical  matters  is  the  philosophy  of  Plotinus  than  that  of  his  master 
Plato,  or  of  Aristotle  and  the  Stoics !  Ancient  thought  dies  out 
with  the  opposition  of  soul  and  body,  good  and  evil,  God  and 
the  wOTld. 


PURPOSE   OF   THE   PRESENT    WORK  9 

individual  life.  For,  in  the  nature  and  destiny 
of  the  human  person  centre  all  the  fundamental 
problems  of  ethics,  metaphysics,  and  theology ;  and 
the  fundamental  contribution  of  Jesus  to  our  prac- 
tical thought  and  to  our  conceptions  of  things  lies 
in  his  teaching  concerning  the  ultimate  nature  and 
vocation  of  the  human  person. 

Some  readers  will  doubtless  be  surprised  that  I 
have  not  entered  into  a  discussion  of  the  date  and 
authorship  of  the  historic  records  or  sources  on  which 
I  have  freely  drawn  for  my  materials,  and  have 
advanced  no  hypothesis  as  to  the  relative  priority 
and  historicity  of  Matthew,  Mark,  and  Luke.  I 
may  as  well  say  at  once  that  I  do  not  consider  such 
a  preHminary  inquiry  vital  to  the  fulfilment  of  the 
aim  set  before  me  in  this  work.  Furthermore,  in 
my  own  opinion,  apart  from  the  external  evidences 
of  contemporary  records,  some  systematic  conception 
of  Jesus'  teaching  and  activity  is  the  indispensable 
prerequisite  to  any  sane  and  sober-minded  discussion 
of  the  dates  and  historicity  of  the  four  gospels.  The 
internal  constitutions  and  relations  of  these  works 
cannot  be  determined  apart  from  such  a  conception. 
This  attitude  will  doubtless  seem  to  many  of  the 
''higher  critics"  of  the  New  Testament  a  varepov 
TTpoTcpoVj  a  putting  of  the  cart  before  the  horse.  I  will 
therefore  proceed  to  explain  and  defend  the  position. 

In  the  case  of  Jesus,  as  of  any  other  great  his- 
torical figure,  we  are  dealing  with  a  personality 
who  has  exerted  a  continuous  historical  influence 


lO    JESUS    CHRIST    AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

down  to  the  present  time.  Great  personalities  are 
true  historical  causes.  Alexander,  Caesar,  Charle- 
magne, Napoleon  I.,  started  pohtical  movements 
whose  effects  continue  and  can  be  traced  backward 
from  the  present  time.  So  it  is  in  the  realm  of  science 
with  Aristotle,  Archimedes,  Bacon,  Newton,  Kant, 
etc. ;  in  art  with  Phidias,  Michelangelo,  Raphael, 
Beethoven,  etc.  These  individuals  have  been  true 
historical  causes^  i.e.  they  have  continued  to  exercise 
influence  in  the  development  of  humanity.  The 
lives,  thoughts,  and  activities  of  the  mass  of  lesser 
individuals  have  been  moulded  by  countless  streams 
of  mental  and  moral  influences  whose  fountain  heads 
are  the  characters,  thoughts,  and  deeds  of  great 
persons,  and  whose  channels  are  marked  out  in  the 
change  and  continuity  of  the  historical  hfe  and  social 
institutions  of  mankind.  These  streams  of  mental 
influence,  welling  up  from  the  mysterious  fountain 
heads  of  human  personality,  have  marked  out  their 
channels  and  beds  in  the  evolution  of  social  institu- 
tions —  in  the  political  state  with  its  manifold  forms ; 
in  the  various  genera  and  schools  of  art ;  in  the  com- 
mercial and  industrial  systems  of  the  ages ;  in  the 
systematic  conceptions  of  science  as  these  are  added 
to  and  modified  from  age  to  age,  etc. 

Great  personalities  are  the  supreme  interpreting 
and  rationally  directing  forces  in  the  historical  evo- 
lution of  man,  and  in  any  stage  or  phase  of  human 
evolution  that  we  may  select,  will  be  found  embedded 
the  countless  streams  of  tendencies  that  have  issued 


PURPOSE    OF    THE    PRESENT    WORK  II 

from  the  creative  individuals  who  have  originated 
new  movements  in  civiHzation  or  at  least  have  altered 
the  direction  of  old  ones. 

Now  Jesus  is  a  preeminent  historical  force  in  the 
thoughts  and  lives  of  the  members  of  our  western 
civilization  to-day  as  well  as  in  the  spirit  and  work- 
ings of  a  great  historical  institution,  —  the  church. 
It  may  be  said  that  his  influence  is  on  the  wane. 
This  has  often  been  said  before.  But  it  cannot  be 
denied  that  his  personality  is  still  a  potent  factor  in 
the  moral  and  spiritual  Ufe,  both  individual  and 
social. 

The  primary  witnesses  to  the  reality  of  Jesus  as 
a  great  historical  force  or  originating  centre  of  spir- 
itual life  are:  i.  The  existence  and  experiences  of 
disciples  to-day  acting  under  his  leadership  and 
striving  to  live  in  accordance  with  his  spirit.  2.  The 
continuity  of  the  Hfe  and  tradition  of  discipleship 
in  the  Christian  church.  However  much  the  church 
in  its  various  branches  may  have  grievously  erred  in 
falling  away  from  the  ethical  spirit  of  the  Master, 
however  much  it  may  in  time  past  have  forgotten 
rehgion  in  ecclesiasticism,  ethics  in  dogmatic  theol- 
ogy, the  lowly  spirit  of  love  in  the  passion  for  author- 
ity and  wealth;  nevertheless,  the  continuous  exist- 
ence and  development  of  the  church  is  an  abiding 
historical  witness  to  the  reahty  and  perennial  power 
of  Jesus'  personaHty  and  influence  in  the  movement 
of  civilization.  Here,  then,  we  have  the  actual 
evidences  in  personal  experience,  discipleship,  and 


12     JESUS   CHRIST   AND    CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

in  institutional  continuity,  of  Jesus  as  a  personal 
historical  force. 

And,  when  we  go  to  the  earUest  documentary 
records  to  get  the  details  of  his  life,  or  the  principles 
of  his  teaching,  we  must  not  forget  that  we  have  to 
do  with  a  living  personality  —  with  an  individual 
spiritual  cause.  We  must  treat  this  person  rever- 
ently and  sympathetically  in  the  integrity  of  his  life 
and  views.  No  one  who  is  unable  sympathetically 
to  appreciate  the  many-sided  and  rich  life  of  a  great 
personal  leader,  who  may  be  influential  in  society 
to-day,  is  competent  to  reconstruct  the  lives  of  great 
historical  individuals.  The  historian  himself  must 
be  a  man  of  personal  caliber  and  the  weakness  of 
much  so-called  '* higher  criticism"  consists  in  the 
lack  on  the  part  of  its  authors  of  a  vital  and  histor- 
ical appreciation  of  the  significance  of  personality. 

In  regard  to  our  special  subject  of  inquiry,  it  is  not 
of  first-rate  importance  whether  Mark  was  written 
before  or  after  70  a.d.,  Luke  and  Matthew  before  or 
after  80  a.d.,  etc.  The  supremely  important  point 
is  this  —  do  we  get  from  these  first  records  of  Jesus 
the  impress  of  a  powerful  spiritual  individuality 
and  a  coherent  and  comprehensive  ethical  and  spir- 
itual attitude  toward  hfe.  We  have,  as  I  have  said, 
in  individual  disciples  and  the  continuous  existence 
of  the  church  as  a  factor  in  society  our  living  witnesses 
to  the  continuing  personal  influence  of  Jesus.  This 
personality  has  been  a  powerful  historical  cause,  and 
is  therefore  real.    And  if,  for  our  purpose,  we  can 


PURPOSE   OF   THE   PRESENT   WORK  1 3 

find  in  the  earliest  records  even  the  bare  outline  and 
suggestion  of  any  system  of  principles  of  conduct, 
constituting  an  integral  and  vital  whole,  then  these 
records  must  be  trustworthy  sources  for  the  Hfe  and 
teaching  of  this  preeminent  historical  personage 
with  whom  we  are  concerned  as  a  great  causal  factor 
in  the  moral  evolution  of  humanity.  "  In  observing 
the  lineaments  of  Jesus,  the  right  focus  was  given 
not  by  his  death  nor  even  by  his  departure,  but  in 
the  subsequent  disciphne  of  memory  and  obedience 
among  his  followers.  Their  increasing  distance  from 
the  object  tended  in  some  degree  to  correct  earlier 
mistakes  of  judgment  in  the  direction  of  exaggeration 
or  of  undervaluing ;  by  removing  certain  obscurities, 
the  very  lapse  of  time  helped  to  purify  and  widen 
in  the  Christian  community  the  powers  of  accurate 
appreciation.  Hence  the  character  and  date  of 
our  extant  gospels.  Just  as  the  full  significance  of 
the  traits  and  issues  bound  up  in  the  faith  of  Jesus 
could  not  be  grasped  by  his  original  disciples  until 
he  ceased  to  move  beside  them,  —  he  left  them  and 
they  knew  him, —  so  it  proved  practically  an  impos- 
sibility for  them,  even  after  their  subsequent  experi- 
ence of  reflection  and  reminiscence,  to  achieve  the 
task  of  creating  a  final  and  adequate  record.  For 
that  they  could  merely  supply  materials.  It  was 
enough  in  this  for  the  disciples  to  be  as  their  Mas- 
ter. Like  Socrates  and  Epictetus,  he  was  no  author. 
He  wrote  once  —  and  that  upon  the  dust.  His  real 
epistles  were  to  be  found  in  the  character  and 


14    JESUS    CHRIST   AND    CIVILIZATION   OF    TO-DAY 

experience  of  his  followers  (2  Cor.  3:3).  Nor  was  it 
otherwise  with  them.  For  other  hands  than  theirs 
the  work  of  evangeHc  composition  was  reserved. 
It  was  completed,  as  perhaps  it  only  could  have  been, 
by  the  epigoni.  Even  those  who  had  received  the 
tradition  of  the  historical  Jesus,  fcara  a-dpKa,  from 
his  personal  companions,  found  that  his  life  in  sub- 
sequent years  opened  out  for  them  (John  12:16; 
14:26;  16:13);  it 

*  Orbed  into  the  perfect  star 
They  knew  not,  when  they  moved  therein/ 

But  this  insight  of  a  second  generation  was  not  neces- 
sarily inferior  at  all  points.  On  the  contrary,  it 
had  some  invaluable  advantages.  In  the  strict  sense 
of  the  word,  the  gospels  are  not  contemporary  records. 
Even  the  earliest  of  them  implies  an  interval  between 
the  facts  and  their  record  —  bridged  though  that 
interval  may  be  by  continuous  tradition  and  surviv- 
ing witnesses.  But  so  far  from  this  distance  being 
an  altogether  regrettable  defect,  it  is  in  some  aspects 
a  profit.  Until  development  has  reached  a  certain 
stage,  analysis  will  always  remain  inadequate;  in- 
deed, it  is  hardly  possible  for  it  to  exist.  Lapse  of 
time  is  essential  to  a  real  conception  of  this  as  of 
any  other  history,  for  it  is  only  after  such  an  interval 
of  experience  and  reflection  that  the  meaning  and 
bearings  of  the  life  in  question  come  out  in  their  true 
and  sure  significance.  Interpretation  is  not  bound 
fast  to  the  contemporary  standpoint.     It  requires 


PURPOSE   OF   THE   PRESENT    WORK  1 5 

facts,  but  it  requires  them  in  perspective.  The 
gospels  in  reahty  do  more  for  us,  written  between 
65  and  105,  than  they  would  have  done  if  composed 
before  35.  Drawn  up  after  at  least  one  generation 
had  passed  away,  and  written  in  a  world  rich  with 
religious  passion,  speculation,  and  achievement, 
these  writings  give  a  wider  and  deeper  account  of 
their  subject  than  any  that  would  have  been  afforded 
by  records  composed  in  the  morning  of  the  Christian 
religion.  During  the  actual  lifetime  of  Jesus,  or 
even  immediately  after  his  death,  the  vital  principle 
of  the  Life  was  not  to  be  grasped  in  its  real  unity  and 
relationships.  Paul  understood  the  secret  of  Jesus 
more  thoroughly  than  many  who  had  trodden  the 
roads  of  Galilee  in  his  company,  and  listened  to 
his  arguments  and  teaching  in  the  synagogues ;  and 
the  writers  of  the  Christian  biography  were  not  neces- 
sarily placed  at  any  serious  disadvantage  for  their 
task  and  mission  by  the  fact  that  their  vision  was 
one  not  of  sight  but  of  insight,  not  of  memory  but 
of  sympathy.'*^  *'The  living  do  not  give  up  their 
secrets  with  the  candour  of  the  dead;  one  key  is 
always  excepted,  and  a  generation  passes  before  we 
can  insure  accuracy."  "Their  raison  d'etre  lay 
in  the  authoritative  and  binding  power  exercised 
by  the  words  of  Jesus  over  the  primitive  community 
from  the  very  beginning,  as  well  as  in  need,  stirred 
by  exigencies  of  time  and  place,  for  possessing  that 
standard  in  an  accessible  and  fairly  uniform  shape, 

^  Mofifatt,  The  Historical  New  Testament,  pp.  13-14. 


l6    JESUS   CHRIST   AND  CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

for  the  purpose  of  personal  conduct,  missionary 
enterprise,  and  religious  nourishment.  The  gospels, 
in  fact,  are  the  first  Christian  creed;  they  are  the 
naive  expression  of  the  creed  in  history."  * 

I  gladly  quote  these  passages,  since  they  seem  to 
me  admirably  to  indicate  the  right  point  of  view 
from  which  to  consider  the  problems  of  New  Testa- 
ment criticism  and  to  be  in  harmony  with  the  con- 
ception I  have  above  outlined  of  the  convincing  evi- 
dence for  the  historical  integrity  of  Jesus  the  Teacher 
as  portrayed  and  reported  in  the  four  canonical 
gospels. 

It  seems  to  me  an  entirely  wrong-headed  procedure 
to  lay  down  in  advance  some  preconceived  canon 
for  testing  the  genuineness  of  Jesus'  utterances,  as 
that,  for  instance,  he  could  not  have  called  himself 
the  Son  of  God  or  the  Son  of  Man  in  any  unique 
sense.  Let  us  first  endeavour  to  get  from  the  records, 
taken  in  their  historical  setting,  a  living  impression 
of  his  personality  and  teaching  as  a  whole  before  we 
proceed  to  strike  out  as  unauthentic  passage  after 
passage  of  utterances  accredited  to  Jesus  and  to 
wrest  others  from  their  obvious  meanings. 

One  finds  among  representatives  of  the  ultra- 
critical  school  of  New  Testament  interpreters  to-day 
a  dogmatic  bias  almost  as  strong  and  perhaps  as 
detrimental  to  a  full  appreciation  of  Jesus'  person- 
ality and  teaching  as  the  bias  of  ultraconservatives 
who  tended  to  sacrifice  the  humanity  of  Jesus  to 

^  Moffatt,  op.  cit.,  p.  27. 


PURPOSE   OF   THE    PRESENT    WORK  1 7 

his  divinity  and,  accordingly,  conducted  the  exegesis 
with  the  presuppositions  that  he  was  omniscient 
on  all  matters,  that  every  word  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment was  equally  inspired,  and  that,  therefore,  the 
most  conflicting  stories  and  sayings  must  be  har- 
monized in  violence  to  reason  and  all  historical 
probability.  For  example,  one  critic,  impressed  by 
the  eschatological  character  of  much  of  Jesus' 
preaching  concerning  the  Kingdom  of  God  as  re- 
ported in  the  Evangehsts,  concludes  that  these 
parts  of  the  gospels  must  be  of  later  origin,  since 
Jesus  could  not  have  at  once  held  that  the  Kingdom 
was  both  present  and  immanent  and  future  and 
transcendent.  Another  critic  from  the  same  prem- 
ises concludes  that  Jesus  was  mistaken  concerning 
the  coming  of  the  Kingdom.  Why,  I  ask,  could 
not  a  supreme  religious  genius,  taking  up  the  current 
eschatological  notions  of  the  Messianic  Kingdom, 
have  spiritualized  them  and  taught  that  the  Kingdom 
was  at  once  present  in  its  beginnings,  immanent  in 
its  development,  and  future  and  transcendent  in 
its  completion? 

Again,  another  critical  school,  beginning  with 
the  assumption  that  Jesus  must  have  regarded  him- 
self simply  as  an  ethical  teacher,  since  he  was  noth- 
ing more  and  could  not  have  been  deceived  about 
himself,  goes  the  length  of  denying  that  he  ever 
referred  to  himself  as  the  Son  of  Man  in  a  unique 
or  individual  sense  or  claimed  to  be  the  Messiah ; 
and  argues  that  wherever  he  used  the  term  "Son 
c 


1 8    JESUS    CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

of  Man"  he  meant  simply  *'Man"  in  the  generic 
sense.  Such  utterances  as,  ^'The  Son  of  Man  is 
Lord  even  of  the  Sabbath  day"  (Matt.  12:8),  etc., 
can  be  made  to  square  with  this  interpretation ;  but 
it  is  surely  doing  utter  violence  to  such  utterances 
as  "The  foxes  have  holes  and  the  birds  of  the  air 
have  nests ;  but  the  Son  of  Man  hath  not  where  to 
lay  his  head"  (Matt.  8:20)  to  say  that  here  he 
means  man  in  general.  This  is  simply  not  the  case, 
and  Jesus  could  hardly  have  uttered  such  a  non- 
sensical notion.  Passage  after  passage,  such  as 
"The  Son  of  Man  came  not  to  be  ministered  unto, 
but  to  minister,"  etc.  (Matt.  20:28),  and  "The  Son 
of  Man  goeth  as  it  is  written  of  him,"  etc.  (Matt. 
26 :  24),  are  struck  out  as  later  additions  or  glosses 
to  his  words,  by  critics  of  this  type,  in  order  to  estab- 
lish their  presupposition,  viz.  that  Jesus  did  not 
claim  to  be  the  Messiah,  and  hence  never  referred 
to  himself  in  a  unique  sense  as  Son  of  Man  or  Son 
of  God^  The  latest  critic  who  is  of  this  way  of 
thinking  ^  even  argues  with  much  ingenuity  that, 
although  we  have  no  Aramaic  record  of  Jesus' 
sayings,  nor  (he  admits)  any  absolute  proof  that  he 
might  not  have  used  some  other  Aramaic  expression 
or  even  a  Greek  expression,  nevertheless,  since  the 
expression  in  Aramaic,  so  far  as  we  have  literary 
remains  of  this  language,  is  bar  nasha,  which  means 
not  this  Son  of  Man  but  "Son  of  Man,"  i.e.  man  in 
the  generic  sense,  therefore  Jesus  must  have  used 

»  N.  Schmidt  in  The  Prophet  of  Nazareth. 


PURPOSE    OF   THE    PRESENT    WORK  1 9 

this  phrase  in  this  sense  alone.  Are  we  then  to  infer 
that  one,  admittedly  a  supreme  rehgious  genius, 
could  not  have  used  an  old  expression  in  a  new  sense 
or  with  deeper  meaning?  We  have  no  Aramaic 
remains  of  Jesus'  sayings,  but  we  have  biographies 
in  Greek,  and  the  problem  is  not  primarily  one  of 
linguistic  but  of  historical  exegesis  and  synthesis, 
i.e.  of  the  unbiased  interpretation  of  the  sayings  and 
deeds  of  a  great  historical  personality.  If  Jesus 
regarded  himself  as  representative  and  leader  of  a 
new  humanity  and  as  a  prophet  of  God,  what  diffi- 
culty is  there  in  supposing  that  he  used  this  term 
*'Son  of  Man"  to  express  at  once  a  unique  relation  to 
humanity  and  a  unique  relation  to  God,  and  that 
sometimes  he  stressed  the  one  and  sometimes  the 
other  shade  of  meaning? 

The  spiritual  history  of  man  is  preeminently  the 
theatre  of  the  unique  and  individual,  and,  when  we 
have  to  do  with  an  individual  who  transcends  in 
insight  and  influence  all  other  religious  teachers 
and  leaders,  we  do  violence  to  the  integrity  of  his 
personality  and  his  genius  and  to  the  genuine  his- 
torical spirit  when  we  assume  that  he  must  have 
used  words  that  evidently  were  fraught  with  new  and 
ineffable  meaning  for  himself  in  traditional  senses 
rigidly  fixed  by  grammatical  exegesis.  Nothing  is 
definitely  settled  as  to  Jesus'  use  of  the  terms 
''Son  of  Man,"  ''Son  of  God,"  and  "Messiah,"  or 
as  to  what  these  terms  meant  to  his  unapproachable 
spirit,  by  determining  what  they  mean  in  the  Book 


'        Of  THE 


20    JESUS    CHRIST    AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

of  Daniel  or  of  Enoch  or  generally  in  Jewish  apoca- 
lyptic literature,  etc.  In  this  way  we  learn  with  some 
degree  of  probability  what  these  terms  meant  to  his 
contemporaries,  the  Scribes  and  Pharisees,  to  his 
hearers,  the  common  people,  etc.;  but  what  they 
meant  to  Jesus  can  be  determined  only  by  reference 
to  the  unity  of  his  historical  personaHty  and  the  con- 
sistency of  his  teaching.^ 

I  have  entered  into  this  brief  discussion  of  matters 
not  strictly  germane  to  the  central  aim  of  the  present 
work  in  order  to  emphasize  and  illustrate  what  I 
mean  by  saying  that  to  understand  Jesus'  teaching, 
his  work,  and  his  personality,  we  must  set  to  work 
without  dogmatic  bias  and  in  the  consciousness  that 
here  we  have  to  do  in  a  supreme  degree  with  a  per- 
sonal creative  force  in  the  historical  order ;  and,  while 
we  must  not  assume,  without  further  consideration, 
that  this  personaHty  is  without  parallel  in  the  records 
of  men,  we  must  equally  not  assume  that  he  can  and 
must  be  levelled  down  to  the  standards  of  other 
masters  in  the  same  order,  i.e.  to  the  level  of  our 
estimate  of  other  religious  teachers,  such  as  Moses, 
Mahomet,  Buddha,  or  Lao-tsze.  If  the  former 
attitude  is  the  bias  of  the  ultraconservative,  the  latter 
is  just  as  surely  the  bias  of  the  ultracritical  who  refuses 
from  the  outset  to  see  in  Jesus  more  than  a  somewhat 
exceptional  man.  From  neither  bias  can  one  draw 
up  a  faithful  picture  of  the  personality  of  Jesus  of 
Nazareth,  or  get  a  right  conception  of  his  teaching. 

^  See,  further,  Appendix,  Ethics  and  Eschatology. 


PURPOSE   OF   THE    PRESENT    WORK  21 

In  framing  this  sketch  of  Jesus'  ethical  teaching 
I  have  drawn  mainly  on  the  synoptic  gospels.  But 
I  have  made  use  of  the  fourth  gospel  where  it  ampli- 
fies or  supplements  the  teaching  of  the  synoptics. 
The  fourth  gospel  is,  of  course,  primarily  a  theo- 
logical work  —  and  indeed  the  greatest  theological 
work  in  the  entire  history  of  the  Christian  church. 
It  presents  an  interpretation  of  the  universal  sig- 
nificance and  cosmic  position  of  the  man  Christ 
Jesus  in  terms  supplied  by  Greek  philosophy.  But 
the  theology  of  the  fourth  gospel  is,  nevertheless, 
based  on  history.  It  is  the  historical  Jesus  who  is 
presented  to  us  as  the  absolute  embodiment  of  the 
Divine  Reason  or  Logos.  And,  in  dramatic  form, 
we  have  presented  in  the  fourth  gospel  historically 
trustworthy  events,  deeds,  and  sayings  of  Jesus  not 
embodied  in  the  other  three  gospels.  Inasmuch 
as  I  am  not  writing  a  life  of  Christ,  it  does  not  fall 
within  my  plan  to  sift  these  actual  events  of  Jesus' 
life  and  words  as  recorded  in  the  fourth  gospel  from 
out  their  theological  setting.  The  ultimate  test  of 
their  historicity  is  their  consistence  with  the  career 
and  utterances  of  the  Master  in  the  synoptics,  and 
with  the  records  of  his  influence  supplied  by  the  other 
New  Testament  writings  considered  in  their  actual 
continuity  with  Christian  discipleship  and  the  devel- 
opment of  the  church  from  then  until  the  present 
time. 


CHAPTER  II 

NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 

Civilized  man  to-day  stands  at  once  closer  to 
nature  and  more  remote  from  her  than  stood  the 
European  of  the  Middle  Ages.  On  the  one  hand 
he  is  less  subject  to  nature,  less  the  creature  of  his 
own  impulses,  less  the  sport  of  nature's  forces  and 
processes,  less  the  prey  of  confused  imaginings  about 
nature,  now  than  in  the  Middle  Ages.  He  does 
not  people  the  air  with  demons,  the  darkness  with 
goblins,  the  waters  with  undines.  He  does  not  attrib- 
ute every  unusual  occurrence  to  the  action  of  a 
spirit,  nor  unexplained  calamities  to  witchcraft.* 
He  has  become  aware  of  the  natural  causal  relation- 
ships in  which  all  things  in  the  world  of  experience 
stand  to  one  another  in  a  way  in  which  even  the 
Greeks,  most  clear-sighted  of  ancient  peoples,  were 
not. 

The  modem  man  has  learned  to  subdue  and  con- 
trol nature.  He  feels  himself  to  be,  by  reason  of  his 
superior  technique,  her  master.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  he  is  more  clearly  conscious  of  the  many  threads 
that  bind  him  to  the  hfe  of  nature.     Man  has  become 

*  In  these  respects,  as  in  many  others,  contemporary  Chinese 
civilization  shows  a  striking  resemblance  to  the  European  Mid- 
dle Ages. 

22 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE        23 

conscious  of  nature's  order  and  systematic  unity 
as  the  mediaeval  European  was  not.  He  has  learned 
how  close  he  is  to  the  brute  in  his  physical  origins 
and  how  narrow  is  the  gulf  which  separates  the  mind 
of  the  child,  as  of  the  savage,  from  mind  in  the  higher 
animals.  He  regards  it  as  a  debatable  question 
whether  animals  reason.  He  has  learned  that  the 
struggle  for  existence  and  the  selection  of  the  strong- 
est to  survive  holds  sway  in  human  society  as  well 
as  in  the  animal  kingdom.  He  finds  that  the  evolu- 
lution  of  human  society  is  conditioned  by  its  physi- 
cal environment.  He  has  learned  to  see  in  detail 
how  intimate  and  fateful  is  the  correlation  between 
body  and  mind  —  between  the  processes  of  the  cen- 
tral nervous  system  and  the  processes  of  thought  and 
feeling.  He  has  come  to  see  bared  the  material 
roots  and  supports  of  human  Hfe,  to  see  its  super- 
structure of  ideals,  aspirations,  and  dreams,  resting 
on  an  economic  basis,  and  to  realize  what  a  tremen- 
dous part  economic  needs  and  struggles,  arising  out 
of  bare  brute  needs  and  appetites,  play  in  the  total 
activity  of  human  life.  He  finds  that  human  nature 
and  social  customs  depend  in  part  on  climate  and 
food.  '  And,  above  all,  as  the  modem  man  looks  out 
upon  the  natural  world  in  its  varied  aspects,  in  the 
geologic  and  geographic  remains  of  its  past  life  and 
activities,  on  the  varied  and  many-faced  aspects  of 
its  present  life  in  bloom  and  decay,  in  forest,  field,  and 
stream,  in  cloud  and  sunshine,  he  feels  himself 
drawn   close  to  nature  through   the  interpretative 


24    JESUS   CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

activity  of  his  own  mind.  He  feels  a  new  sympathy 
and  kinship  with  nature,  born  of  an  intelligent  and 
ever  enlarging  insight  into  her  constitution  and 
processes. 

Hence  the  modem  man  feels  that  in  the  conduct  of 
life  he  must  come  to  terms  with  nature.  It  is  no 
longer  possible  as  it  was  in  the  Middle  Ages  to  ignore 
or  deny  her  claims  on  him,  no  longer  possible  to 
set  the  realm  of  grace  in  flat  opposition  to  the  realm 
of  nature.  The  rational  mind,  conscious  of  the  tre- 
mendous social  progress  made  through  the  study 
of  nature  and  the  light  shed  thereby  on  human 
nature  itself,  will  not  admit  that  a  full  and  efficient 
life  can  any  longer  be  Uved  in  isolation  from  nature 
or  that  to  deny  absolutely  her  claims  is  to  live  a 
higher  life. 

The  raw  material  and  basis,  at  least,  of  the  ethical 
life  must  be  found  in  the  natural,  even  if  we  do  not 
admit  that  the  Stoic  formula,  "Life  according  to 
nature,"  is  still  an  adequate  and  all-comprehending 
ethical  maxim.  It  must  be  the  function  of  nature 
to  provide  for  the  development  of  the  soul.  The 
spiritual  Ufe  must  grow  out  of  the  natural.  There 
can  be,  it  would  seem,  no  irreconcilable  conflict 
between  them.  For  our  science  and  philosophy 
as  well  as  the  instinctive  demands  of  our  human 
nature  insist  on  the  unity  and  integrity  of  life.  We 
cannot  permanently  rest  in  dualism.  We  cannot 
face  the  everlasting  and  indecisive  conflict  between 
two  hostile  powers.     If  nature  cannot  be  harmonized 


NATURE   AND   HUMAN   NATURE  25 

with  spirit,  then  spirit  has  neither  home  nor  basis 
of  operation  in  this  world  of  ours. 

Such  seems  to  be  the  outcome  of  the  modem 
attitude  toward  nature.  And  yet,  so  far  are  nature 
and  human  nature  from  displaying  to  the  scientific 
mind  a  final  issue  of  bhssful  harmony,  that  a  late 
distinguished  leader  in  the  science  of  nature  ^  has 
insisted  on  the  radical  antagonism  between  the 
tendencies  and  drift  of  nature  and  the  specifically 
moral  and  social  aspects  of  human  fife.  The  nat- 
ural cosmos  revealed  by  science  appears  in  its  move- 
ment to  be  coldly  and  blindly  indifferent,  if  not  ac- 
tually hostile,  to  moral  endeavour,  and  the  moral  and 
social  achievements  of  mankind  seem  to  have  been 
wrought  out  in  the  very  teeth  of  this  inhuman  nat- 
ural order.  Evidently,  things  cannot  remain  at  this 
pass.  Either  we  must  go  forward  to  a  solution  of 
the  antithesis  or  the  moral  endeavour  of  mankind 
must  seem  an  irrational  eruption  in  a  non-moral 
universe. 

What  has  Jesus  to  say  on  this  point  ?  He  seems 
perhaps  at  first  blush  to  countenance  the  indiffer- 
ence of  the  natural  order  to  moral  considerations. 
''For  he  maketh  his  sun  to  shine  on  the  evil  and 
on  the  good,  and  sendeth  rain  on  the  just  and  on 
the  unjust"  (Matt.  5 :  45).  Superficially  this  seems 
in  agreement  with  Huxley's  view  of  the  non-morality 
of  the  natural  order.  But,  in  reality,  this  saying  of 
Jesus  expresses  a  conception  of  nature  as  the  mani- 
*  Thos.  H.  Huxley  in  Evolution  and  Eihics. 


26     JESUS   CHRIST   AND  CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

festation  of  a  divine  beneficence  which  transcends 
the  standpoint  of  ordinary  legal  morality.  The  real 
universe  is  in  Jesus'  view,  super-moral.  It  is  be- 
cause of  the  unstinted  abundance  with  which  God 
pours  out  his  favours  that  the  sun  shines  aUke  on  good 
and  evil  and  the  rain  descends  ahke  on  the  just  and 
the  unjust.  This  bounty  is  the  expression  of  an 
infinite  love  which  far  transcends  the  limits  of  a 
merely  legal  morality  of  requital.  And  so  nature, 
in  Jesus'  conception,  is  the  expression  of  a  divine 
meaning  and  beneficent  attitude  toward  man.  The 
life  of  nature  is  truly  for  him  the  basis  or  founda- 
tion of  the  human  life.  The  closeness  of  man  to 
nature  is  expressed  in  the  numerous  analogies  found 
between  the  facts  and  processes  of  nature  and  the 
ideal  life  in  the  Kingdom  of  God.  "The  kingdom 
is  Hke  a  grain  of  mustard  seed."  "It  is  like  leaven 
which  a  woman  took  and  hid  in  three  measures 
of  meal  till  the  whole  was  leavened  "  (St.  Luke 
13:18-21). 

Nature  is  not  for  Jesus  foreign  to,  much  less  is 
it  hostile  to,  human  nature.  He  takes  no  ascetic 
view  of  natural  goods  and  enjoyments.  The  chil- 
dren of  the  bride-chamber  rejoice  while  the  bride- 
groom is  with  them.  The  catastrophes  and  ills 
that  befall  man  in  the  natural  course  of  events  are 
not  visitations  of  divine  wrath.  "  Or  those  eighteen, 
upon  whom  the  tower  in  Siloam  fell,  and  slew  them, 
think  ye  that  they  were  sinners  above  all  men 
that  dwell  in  Jerusalem  ?"   (Luke  13:4.)     *' Neither 


NATURE  AND   HUMAN   NATURE  27 

hath  this  man  sinned,  nor  his  parents :  but  that  the 
works  of  God  should  be  made  manifest  in  him" 
(St.  John  9:3). 

In  the  order  of  nature,  man  must  meet  evil  as  well 
as  good,  pain  as  well  as  pleasure ;  but,  on  the  whole 
and  from  the  standpoint  of  its  divine  source,  nature 
is  to  be  regarded  as  not  hostile  to  and  inharmonious 
with  human  life.  It  is  true  that  there  are  profound 
disturbances  of  human  life  —  grievous  sickness, 
demoniacal  possession,  etc.^  These  Jesus  does  not 
try  to  explain  away  by  metaphysical  quibbles.  He 
heals  them,  but  he  insists  everywhere  on  the  right 
spiritual  attitude.  He  demands  personal  faith  or 
trust  as  the  indispensable  antecedent  to  healing, 
thereby  pointing  to  the  spiritual  end  which  the  suf- 
ferings of  man  may  be  made  to  serve.  This  spirit- 
ual end  is  explicitly  stated  in  such  words  as,"  Blessed 
are  they  that  mourn,  for  they  shall  be  comforted " 
(St.  Matt.  5:4).  "Blessed  be  ye  poor:  for  your's 
is  the  kingdom  of  God."  "Blessed  are  ye  that 
hunger  now :  for  ye  shall  be  filled  "  (Luke  6 :  20-21). 

Throughout  Jesus'  teaching  the  idea  of  life  plays 
the  most  prominent  part.  He  sets  forth  the  char- 
acter of  the  spiritual  life  by  analogy  with  the  natural 
Hfe.  The  natural  Hfe  is  the  basis  of  the  ethical 
and  spiritual.  The  latter  develops  out  of  the  former. 
In  both  ahke,  singleness  or  integrity  of  function  and 
aim  is  the  condition  and  goal  of  growth.    "  If  there- 

^  Jesus  accepted  the  popular  conception  of  neurotic  and  men- 
tal disorders  as  due  to  demoniacal  profession. 


28    JESUS   CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

fore  thine  eye  be  single,  thy  whole  body  shall  be  full 
of  light"  (Matt.  6:22). 

But  the  growth  of  the  spiritual  man  out  of  the  nat- 
ural is  not  a  blind  and  placid  process  which  goes  on 
smoothly  and  without  retardation.  There  are  critical 
epochs  in  life.  Man's  natural  birth  is  a  critical 
process  near  the  beginning  of  his  earthly  life;  still 
more  critical  is  his  spiritual  new  birth  —  man's 
coming  to  himself,  his  awakening  to  full  self-con- 
sciousness of  himself  and  of  his  true  destiny.  This 
process  of  awakening  is  beautifully  portrayed  in 
the  story  of  the  prodigal  son.  The  prodigal  son  was 
a  conscious  being  with  the  power  of  thought  when 
he  set  out  on  his  career  of  self-indulgence.  But  he 
had  not  really  found  himseK, —  he  had  not  turned 
his  thoughts  inwards, —  he  had  not  discovered  the 
vanity  and  pain  of  a  life  without  centre,  without 
integrity  and  wholeness.  He  went  forth  to  squander 
his  substance  and  his  vitaUty  in  a  career  of  aimless 
and  disjointed  dissipation,  ignorant  of  his  true 
birthright  as  a  national  and  spiritual  being. 

There  are  three  stages  in  the  development  of  life. 
First  is  the  unconscious  or  semiconscious  life  of 
the  lower  organisms  —  of  the  Hlies  of  the  field  and 
the  fowls  of  the  air.  This  is  a  Ufe  regulated  by 
blind  instinct  and  impulse  —  a  life  in  which  con- 
sciousness is  at  best  intermittent  and  without  con- 
trolling power.  There  is  here  no  seljconsciousnesSj 
no  deliberative  choices,  no  pursuit  of  conscious 
aims.      Second  is  the  life  of  selfconsciousness,  to 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE        29 

which  the  human  child  awakens  through  intercourse 
with  other  selves,  through  imitation  and  social 
rivalry,  through  combat  and  cooperation  with  its 
fellows.  This  is  the  stage  in  which  the  distinctively 
human  Hfe  begins.  In  it  the  individual  becomes 
conscious  of  his  several  impulses  and  instincts,  of 
their  separate  results,  and  aware  of  the  conflict  which 
these  instincts  engender  with  one  another  and  of 
the  individual  with  other  individuals.  Reason  now 
arises  to  power  as  the  ideal  of  an  internal  harmony 
in  the  self  and  the  ideal  of  a  social  harmony  with 
other  selves.  For  the  reasonable  life  in  practical 
matters  is  a  life  of  order  and  harmony.  But  reason 
is  not  yet  effective  to  control  impulse.  It  only 
becomes  so  in  the  third  stage.  Third  is  spiritual 
selfconsciousness  —  the  control  of  natural  powers 
and  instincts,  of  natural  impulse  and  desire,  by  the 
spiritual  sense  of  a  unitary  life,  of  an  immortal  destiny 
realized  in  growing  harmony  with  self  and  others. 
In  this  last  stage  alone  does  life  become  truly  rational 
and  get  an  abiding  centre,  a  permanent  controlling 
aim  to  be  progressively  realized.  It  is  in  this  third 
stage  that  the  man  passes  definitively  from  the  nat- 
ural to  the  spiritual  life.  It  is  in  this  stage  that 
the  spirit  becomes  lord  of  the  flesh  —  that  nature 
is  transformed  into  and  subordinated  to  human 
nature.  And  it  is  with  this  last  phase,  with  the  birth 
into  the  spiritual  hfe  and  the  growth  of  it  in  the 
soul,  that  Jesus  is  chiefly  concerned. 
Nature  with  him,  then,  is  not  hostile  to  spirit.    The 


30      JESUS   CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION    OF   TO-DAY 

Spiritual  life,  the  distinctively  human  life,  must  come 
to  birth  from  the  natural,  and  the  latter  will  continue 
to  supply  the  occasion  for  spiritual  development. 
But  with  the  critical  epoch,  the  new  birth,  the 
inward  or  central  principle  of  rational  self  con- 
sciousness begins  to  control  and  direct  the  nature 
life.  The  latter  is  now  first  illuminated  as  to  its 
true  meaning  and  function.  We  are  now  able  to 
see  that  the  conflicts  and  shortcomings  of  the  natural 
life  are  themselves  but  natal  conditions  of  spiritual 
life.  It  is  in  the  rational  control  and  guidance  of 
a  man's  native  or  "  natural "  impulses  and  appetites 
that  the  spiritual  hfe  begins.  This  power  of  control 
is  not  to  be  gained  without  effort,  and  does  not  come 
at  one  blow.  The  spirit  is  the  directive  principle 
of  human  life  —  the  rational  conscience  or  heart  of 
man  out  of  which  proceed  the  issues  of  Hfe.  But 
this  rational  spirit,  too,  like  the  lower  life  principle, 
exists  at  first  only  in  germ.  It  too  must  grow,  and 
that  not  haphazard  as  a  wild  flower  grows,  but  by 
careful  nurture.  The  spirit,  too,  must  battle  with 
the  crude  elements  of  existence,  must  toughen  its 
fibre,  and  prove  its  strength  in  the  struggle  with  a 
not  wholly  favourable  environment.  The  glory  of 
man  is  in  the  conscious  fife  of  mind,  and  the  glory 
of  mind  is  in  its  power  of  conscious  choice  and  pur- 
suit of  ideals ;  and  what  most  differentiates  the  growth 
of  a  spiritual  manhood  from  all  forms  of  merely 
natural  growth  is  the  active  participation  of  a  man's 
own    will  and    thought  in  his  own  development. 


NATURE   AND   HUMAN   NATURE  31 

It  is  in  the  growth  of  free  intelligence  and  power  of 
self-directing  choice  that  man  becomes  at  once  the 
crown  and  interpretation  of  the  entire  evolution  of 
life.  The  lower  forms  of  life  are  plastic  to  their 
environments  —  they  must  adjust  themselves  to 
climate  and  food  and  other  circumstances,  or  perish. 
And,  even  when  the  adjustment  consists  in  an  in- 
dividual reaction  to  the  environment,  this  is  blindly 
performed.  The  actions  of  animals  are  guided 
chiefly  by  instinct,  somewhat  modified  and  enlarged, 
it  is  true,  in  the  higher  species  by  parental  example 
and  experience.  But,  let  an  entirely  new  situation 
arise,  i.e.  one  not  provided  for  by  instinct  or  tradi- 
tion, and  the  animal  meets  the  situation,  if  at  all,  by 
happy  accident.  Man,  on  the  other  hand,  does  not 
only  rationally  and  with  foresight  adjust  himself  to 
his  physical  environment.  He  trans jorms  it.  Fur- 
thermore, he  creates  for  himself  a  wholly  new  en- 
vironment —  a  spiritual  atmosphere  —  by  the  for- 
mation of  social  institutions,  by  the  formulation  of 
ideal  ends  consciously  sought  after,  by  the  embodi- 
ment of  ideals  in  custom  and  opinion,  in  institution 
and  law.  Close  as  he  is  to  outer  nature,  then,  man 
is  destined  to  be  her  master  in  the  measure  in  which 
he  is  master  of  his  own  nature.  For  the  power  and 
influence  of  outer  nature  resides  in  its  rapport 
or  living  contact  with  his  own  desires,  interests, 
and  aims. 

In  the  teaching  of  Jesus  in  regard  to  man's  rela- 
tion to  nature,  this  is  precisely  the  standpoint  taken. 


32      JESUS   CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

Jesus  steers  a  clear  course  between  the  ascetic  nega- 
tion of  natural  impulse  and  desire  as  wholly  ahen 
and  hostile  to  the  conscious  spiritual  Hfe  of  man 
and  the  utter  denial  of  any  difference  between  man 
and  the  brute  which  would  glorify  mere  impulse  and 
desire,  make  the  power  of  choice  and  the  influence 
of  reason  illusory,  and  destroy  all  the  painfully  and 
slowly  built  up  social  institutions  and  ideals  which 
make  it  possible  for  the  child  of  civihzation  to  start 
out  on  a  new  career  of  mental  or  spiritual  growth 
precisely  where  the  savage  leaves  off ;  i.e.  to  begin 
life  by  the  appropriation  of  a  rich  inheritance  of 
culture  stored  up  in  social  tradition.  The  entire 
history  of  human  civihzation,  yes,  the  very  existence 
and  progress  of  natural  science,  itself  a  creation  of 
conscious  reason,  speaks  against  the  gross  misunder- 
standing of  the  process  of  evolution  which  would 
find  a  canon  for  human  conduct  in  the  glorification 
of  the  brute  struggle  for  existence,  and  which  would 
reverse  the  entire  upward  movement  of  humanity 
by  reducing  all  intellectual  and  moral  worth  to  the 
level  of  the  crude  beginnings  of  Hfe.  The  existence 
of  science  as  well  as  of  civilization  proclaims  the 
mastery  of  mind  over  nature  and  the  futihty  and 
danger  of  regarding  the  intelligence  and  conscience 
of  man  as  the  product  and  mechanical  equivalent 
of  mere  blind  forces  of  nature  impelled  from  behind. 
Nature  is  hghted  up,  controlled,  and  interpreted 
by  the  human  mind.  There  is  a  harmony  between 
nature  and  human  nature,  but  to  this  harmony  the 


NATURE   AND   HUMAN   NAtURfi  33 

elements  and  processes  of  nature  contribute  auxil- 
iary instruments  —  the  fundamental  note  is  supplied 
by  human  nature.  To  live  in  accordance  with  our 
own  nature  we  must  transcend  nature.  Our  lives 
must  be  autonomous,  —  self-legislative,  —  and  this 
rational  autonomy  belongs  to  no  merely  natural 
being. 

On  the  other  hand,  in  the  face  of  man's  implica- 
tion in  the  evolution  of  Hfe,  of  the  manifold  strands 
of  heritage  and  environmental  influence  which  bind 
him  with  outer  nature ;  yes,  in  view  of  the  very  har- 
mony of  his  mind  with  the  order  of  nature  evidenced 
by  the  logic  of  evolution  and  the  successful  practical 
control  of  nature's  processes  by  the  human  will,  it 
has  become  forever  impossible  to  maintain  the  nega- 
tive and  ascetic  attitude  of  the  mediaevalist  toward 
nature.  That  duaUsm  which  would  separate  man 
by  the  whole  diameter  of  being  from  the  outer  world 
and  find  the  realization  of  spirit  in  the  negation  of 
nature  is  an  anachronism. 

The  true  relation  of  spirit  to  nature's  impulses 
and  tendencies  is  affirmation  and  transformation  by 
reason.  The  right  attitude  of  man  toward  nature 
is  that  of  intelligent  control  in  the  service  of  his  own 
life  —  in  the  promotion  of  an  increasing  integrity 
and  harmony  of  the  rational  conscious  nature  within 
him. 

This  is  the  attitude  of  Jesus  toward  nature.  His 
teaching  here  is  not  only  modem  and  of  present 
utility,  but  permanent  in  value.     But  the  efficacy 


34      jESUS   CHRIST   AND  CIVILIZATION  OF  TO-DAY 

of  this  teaching  rests  on  the  assumption  that  in  human 
L,''  nature  there  resides  a  unique  power  of  choice  and 
self-direction.  And  we  must  now  consider  Jesus* 
teaching  on  this  point  in  relation  to  present-day 
problems  and  conceptions. 


CHAPTER    III 

THE  HEART  OF  MAN 

Perhaps  in  no  period  in  the  history  of  western 
thought  has  the  nature  and  reahty  of  the  freedom  of 
the  human  will  been  more  in  debate  than  in  the 
present  time.  While  the  movement  toward  politi- 
cal and  industrial  freedom  has  progressed  steadily, 
and  while  freedom  in  these  relations  of  life  now 
receives  at  least  a  wide  theoretical  recognition,  the 
capacity  of  man  for  ultimate,  self-originating  choice 
and  self-determining  action  is  widely  denied  and, 
even  where  seemingly  accepted  in  scientific  circles, 
is  often  hedged  in  by  so  many  quahfications  that  it  is 
hardly  distinguishable  from  the  doctrine  that  ab- 
solute necessity  rules  in  human  actions. 

Man  on  his  physical  side  seems  tied  and  bound  with 
the  chains  of  physical  causation.  His  bodily  life 
seems  but  a  temporary  collocation  of  elements  that 
in  themselves  are  parts  in  an  unbroken  and  unrest- 
ing process  of  change  in  the  universe.  The  life  that 
centres  in  an  individual  seems,  from  the  standpoint 
of  natural  science,  to  be  but  a  transient  eddy  or  vor- 
tex in  a  universal  stream  of  physical  life.  The 
movement  of  physical  science  is  toward  the  reduc- 

35 


36      JESUS   CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION  OF   TO-DAY 

tion  of  man's  physical  life  to  the  universal  life  in 
nature,  and  toward  the  reduction  of  this  universal 
Hfe  to  mechanical  processes. 

And,  on  the  psychological  side,  the  growing  in- 
sight into  the  hereditary  factors  of  mental  constitu- 
tion, and  the  recognition  of  the  tremendous  influence 
of  social  tradition  and  environment,  seem  to  point 
us  toward  the  ultimate  possibility  of  explaining  a 
man's  conscious  Hfe  and  actions  wholly  in  terms  of 
inherited  tendency  and  of  the  play  of  those  social 
influences  by  which  the  incipient  desires  and  im- 
pulses of  the  self  are  transformed  into  actual  motives 
of  action,  through  the  force  of  established  custom 
and  opinion  and  by  the  power  of  example,  deterrent 
or  promotive. 

I  shall  enter  here  into  no  detailed  critique  of  the 
doctrine  of  physical  or  materiahstic  determinism. 
The  groundsfor  rejecting  the  viewthat  physical  events 
determine  mental  processes  with  inevitable  necessity 
I  have  fully  given  in  another  place.^  Here  I  will 
only  remark  that  the  impossibihty  of  explaining  from 
purely  physical  premises  how  consciousness  could 
arise  at  all,  much  less  how  knowledge  could  develop 
beyond  the  crudest  and  blindest  sensations,  and  how 
ideals  of  conduct  could  arise  and  gain  authority  over 
brute  impulse,  is  the  insuperable  obstacle  in  the  way 
of  the  materialistic  theory  of  things.  Until  advocates 
of  materialistic  necessitarianism  have  advanced  at 
least  one  demonstrable  step  toward  overcoming  this 

*  Personality  and  Reality  (in  the  press). 


THE   HEART   OF    MAN  37 

obstacle,  we  are  entitled  to  accept  the  common  con- 
sciousness that  we  are  ourselves  the  sources  of  voli- 
tional or  deliberate  action,  and  to  rule  materialism 
out  of  court.  The  inward  facts  of  attentive  delibera- 
tion and  choice,  the  consideration  of  alternative 
possibilities  of  action,  the  weighing  of  motives,  the 
selection  by  the  self  of  a  desire,  interest,  or  ideal  for 
emphasis  and  affirmation  in  the  face  of  strong  con- 
flicting desires,  and,  above  all,  the  feeling  of  obligation 
and  power  to  follow  out  a  difficult  or  disagreeable 
duty  —  these  are  prima  facie  evidence  that  the  psychi- 
cal self  is  the  author  of  its  own  actions.  Moral 
action,  i.e.  the  deHberate  action  of  a  conscious  self, 
is  self-determined  action.  Kant's  moral  argument 
for  freedom  has  lost  none  of  its  force:  "I  ought, 
therefore  I  can." 

But,  now,  what  of  the  view  which  finds  that, 
while  rational  and  deliberate  human  choice  is  in- 
deed psychical  or  internal  in  origin,  the  psychical 
process  of  choice  or  volition  is  always  the  determined 
resultant  of  a  variety  of  blind  biological  tendencies 
and  motives  that  are  simply  the  inevitable  outcome, 
in  this  particular  individual,  of  countless  streams  of 
cravings  and  impulses  that  have  originated  in  the 
process  of  natural  evolution  and  that  are  here  brought 
together  for  the  moment  under  the  focal  light  of  a 
conscious  self  ? 

According  to  this  view  the  consciousness  of  free- 
dom, which  a  man  has  when  he  finally  makes  up 
his  mind  and  lets  his  decision  issue  in  overt  act,  is 


38      JESUS    CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

simply  the  sense  of  relief  from  the  painful  tension 
caused  by  hesitation  and  vacillation  in  thought  and 
impulse.  The  self  is  distressed  by  uncertainty, 
torn  by  conflicting  motives.  It  feels  the  strain  of 
competing  tendencies  and  the  suspense  of  thought 
that  is  not  able  to  reach  a  conclusion.  Voluntary 
decision  means  the  victory  of  one  tendency  or  im- 
pulse and  the  exclusion  of  all  incompatible  tendencies. 
This  means  the  restoration  of  harmony  or  unity  in 
feeling  and  the  discharge  of  the  accumulated  energies 
of  the  whole  system  —  muscular  and  psychical  — 
in  one  dejftnite  channel.  This  discharge  gives  a 
highly  pleasurable  feehng  of  relief,  and  this  feeling 
gives  rise  to  the  illusion  that  in  some  mysterious 
way  the  essential  or  real  self,  that  sits  as  judge  and 
ruler  at  the  centre  of  conscious  life,  has  somehow 
decided  the  whole  case.  But,  in  truth,  according  to 
the  view  we  are  describing,  what  really  happens  is 
that  certain  psychical  impulses^^  which  make  up  the 
active  side  of  the  self,  are  working  themselves  out 
to  a  resultant  like  any  other  forces  of  nature.  The 
ensuing  decision  and  action  is  the  outcome  of  what 
physicists  call  a  ''composition  of  forces." 

It  is  evident  that  the  primary  question  at  issue  here 
is  that  of  the  unity ^  integrity ^  and  uniqueness  of  the 
individual  life  or  personality.  If  the  central  unity 
of  the  individual  be  inexplicable  and  inderivable 
from  biological  heredity,  i.e.  from  inherited  tendencies 
transmitted  through  the  bodily  organism,  and  from 
*  *'  Idea-forces  "  they  are  called  by  A.  Fouillee,  a  French  writer. 


THE    HEART   OF    MAN  39 

the  influence  of  physical  and  social  environment, 
then  room  is  left  for  freedom  as  the  affirmation  in 
action  of  a  spiritual  selfhood. 

In  entering  upon  the  consideration  of  the  reasons 
in  favour  of  the  uniqueness  of  the  self,  I  must  briefly 
mention  one  consideration,  the  full  force  of  which 
can  be  appreciated  only  by  those  who  give  some  at- 
tention to  the  study  of  philosophy.  The  primary 
principle  on  which  all  knowledge^  both  oj  the  phys- 
ical world  and  the  psychical  or  mental  lije,  depends 
is  the  conscious  unity  of  the  self  in  knowing.  If  you 
or  I  have  knowledge,  whether  of  a  physical  object 
or  event,  a  pain  or  idea  in  our  own  nature,  or  some 
mental  state  of  another  person,  this  means  that 
you  or  I  know  that  a  certain  idea  or  mental  state 
that  we  have  is  image,  sign,  or  in  some  way  repre- 
sentative of  that  fact.  To  know  is  to  personally 
possess  or  be  aware  of  the  relation  of  an  idea  to 
something  else.  In  other  words,  "live"  knowledge, 
"real"  knowledge,  in  distinction  from  the  mere  pos- 
sibiHties  of  knowledge,  e.g.  printed  books,  material 
things,  etc.,  —  is  possessed  always  by  "me,"  "you," 
or  some  other  "person."  I  cannot  fully  know 
anythhig  without  knowing  that  I  am  I.  Hence, 
whatever  outer  source  my  knowledge  may  seem  to 
come  from,  it  is  not  knowledge  unless  it  becomes 
in  some  way  a  part  of  my  personal  experience.  /, 
as  knowing,  am  a  single,  unique  consciousness. 

In  a  precisely  similar  way,  "I"  do  not  act  with 
will  or  conscious  volition,  unless  I  have  consciously 


40      JESUS   CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

entertained,  considered,  adopted,  and  affirmed,  as 
"mine,"  or  as  satisfying  my  ''self,"  some  impulse, 
appetite,  or  desire.  As  a  thinking  being  no  desire 
or  impulse  exists  except  as  }or  "me,"  and  "I"  am 
not  determined  from  without  by  motives,  since  no 
possible  action  or  aim  is  an  actual  motive  until  I 
entertain  and  accept  it.  In  short,  my  inherited 
and  inborn  impulses,  tendencies,  desires,  are  without 
power  and  meaning  in  my  conscious  life  unless  "I" 
as  a  conscious  thinking  being  consider  them  as 
possible  motives  to  action,  as  desirable  aims  for 
"me." 

Voluntary  action  is  meaningless  without  the  re- 
action of  a  unique,  thinking  principle  or  "self" 
to  whatever  stimulus,  impulse,  or  incitement  may 
be  present  in  consciousness.  The  whole  realm  of 
conscious  and  voHtional  activity  loses  the  quality 
which  distinguishes  it  from  the  blind  unconscious 
movement  of  physical  forces  when  the  "self"  is  left 
out  of  account.  But  are  not  the  character  of  thought 
and  the  controlling  practical  interests,  opinions,  and 
aims  in  the  individual  determined  by  social  tradi- 
tion and  opinion?  In  answer  to  this  question  it  is 
to  be  said,  first  of  all,  that  the  emphasis  on  social 
tradition  and  environment,  on  established  custom, 
law,  and  opinion,  on  training  in  home  and  school, 
etc.,  as  influential  factors  in  determining  the  conduct 
and  opinions  of  the  individual,  is  often  carried  too 
far  to-day.  This  emphasis  on  social  environment 
often  leads  to  a  denial  or  neglect  of  the  part  which 


THE   HEART   OF   MAN  41 

individuals  play  in  creating^  transmitting,  and 
amending  social  tradition,  custom,  and  opinion. 
The  individual  is  regarded  as  a  purely  passive  thing, 
a  wax  tablet  or  a  sheet  of  blank  paper ;  in  short,  as 
not  in  any  sense  an  individual  or  independent  centre 
for  psychical  reaction  to  stimulus  from  without. 
Out  of  this  inert,  shapeless,  featureless  X,  society,  we 
are,  in  effect,  told,  shapes  what  is  called  an  individual. 
The  absurd  conclusion  follows  that,  since  society 
is  only  another  name  for  a  group  of  interrelated 
individuals,  every  individual  is  created  by  the  actions 
of  other  individuals  equally  as  inert  and  featureless 
as  himself.  In  other  words,  by  adding  together  a 
number  of  zeros  we  get  a  positive  quantity.  Society 
can  hardly  hold  together  and  develop  on  the  eco- 
nomic principle  of  those  islanders  who  are  said  to 
subsist  by  taking  in  one  another's  washing. 

After  all,  the  actual  vitaUty  and  potency  of  social 
tradition  and  custom  in  matters  of  conduct,  as  in 
other  spheres  of  social  influence,  depend  on  their 
active  assimilation  by  individual  minds  and  on  their 
reexpression  through  the  reaction  of  relatively  self- 
dependent  individual  wills.  While  the  main  Hnes 
of  a  given  social  tradition,  in  manners,  speech, 
politics,  morals,  or  reHgion,  may  be  transmitted 
from  generation  to  generation,  yet  the  tradition  is 
constantly  undergoing  modification  by  the  reactions 
of  a  variety  of  individuals.  Moral  traditions  change 
slowly,  yet  how  great  has  been  the  influence  of 
Socrates,  Plato,  the  Stoics;   of  Moses  and  the  He- 


42      JESUS    CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION    OF   TO-DAY 

brew  prophets;  of  St.  Paul,  St.  Augustine,  St.  Fran- 
cis, Savonarola,  Luther,  Carlyle,  Ruskin;  of  Mo- 
hammed, Confucius,  and  Buddha?  In  the  face  of 
the  notorious  conservative  and  resistive  power  of 
religion  in  society  what  revolutions  were  wrought  by 
Isaiah,  Hosea,  Amos,  and  Jeremiah ;  by  Mohammed 
when  he  destroyed  the  fetichism  and  polytheism 
of  his  tribesmen  and  swept  away  the  corrupt  Chris- 
tianity as  well  as  the  heathenism  of  surrounding 
peoples ;  by  Luther,  Calvin,  and  the  English  reform- 
ers, when  they  set  going  movements  that  broke  the 
power  and  destroyed  the  unity  of  the  mediaeval 
church  ?  How  great  the  political  influences  of  Peri- 
cles and  Alexander,  JuHus  Caesar  and  Charlemagne, 
of  Pitt  the  Elder  and  Napoleon  the  First,  of  Mazzini 
and  Cavour,  of  Bismarck  and  Lincoln?  How 
great  and  rapid  the  transformations  wrought  in 
industrial  methods  by  great  inventors  and  organizers  ? 
How  great  the  influence  of  Shakespeare  and  Goethe 
in  literature,  of  Raphael  and  Michelangelo  in  paint- 
ing, of  Beethoven  and  Wagner  in  music  ? 

Now,  every  individual,  however  humble,  when 
he  exercises  his  power  of  reason  and  choice,  when 
he  comes  to  self-consciousness,  becomes  in  some  de- 
gree an  independent  centre  of  reaction  to  social 
tradition  and  established  custom.  He  reacts  to 
these  influences  in  his  own  unique  way.  He  may 
accept  entirely  the  principles  of  action  current  in 
his  social  atmosphere ;  but,  even  if  he  be  a  conform- 
ist, he  at  least  acts  with  conscious  reason.    He  con- 


THE    HEART    OF   MAN  43 

sents  and  conforms  as  an  individual,  and,  as  such, 
contributes  his  own  part  to  the  on-going  of  the  social 
life  in  which  he  moves.  He  may  assume  a  more 
or  less  critical  or  reformatory  attitude,  and  thus  ma- 
terially modify  existing  customs  and  opinions.  He 
may,  within  the  hmits  allowed  by  the  powers  that 
be,  exercise  a  hostile  and  destructive  influence  on 
tradition,  such  as  we  find  men  doing  in  the  realms  of 
political,  intellectual,  and  theological  theories.  Hume 
and  Voltaire,  for  example,  by  their  destructive  criti- 
cisms, cleared  the  air  for  new  constructive  movements. 

It  is  given  to  every  man,  who  will  enter  into  his 
spiritual  birthright  as  an  individual,  to  make  his 
own  reaction  to  the  influences  which  surround  him. 
In  fine,  it  is  a  one-sided  truth  to  say  that  the  individ- 
ual's freedom  of  action  is  Kmited  by  social  tradition 
or  custom,  by  the  influence  of  the  social  atmosphere 
which  he  breathes.  The  other  side  of  the  truth  is 
that  social  custom,  Hke  inborn  natural  impulse,  is 
occasion,  material  and  stimulus,  for  that  free  activ- 
ity of  the  individual  by  which  he  enters  into  pos- 
session of  his  spiritual  nature  and  so  becomes  truly 
a  person. 

Let  us  now  turn  to  the  influence  of  heredity  on 
character.  In  the  first  place,  there  is  even  less 
evidence  that  acquired  mental  characteristics  are 
directly  transmitted  from  the  parent  organism 
than  that  acquired  physical  characteristics  are.  In 
the  second  place,  while  we  find  a  frequent  resem- 
blance in  mental  traits  between  parents  and  childrenj 


44      JESUS   CHRIST  AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

this  can  be  explained  simply  as  the  persistency  of 
original  variations.  Thirdly,  every  genius  bom  of 
obscure  parents,  indeed  every  man  of  talent  who  is 
of  commonplace  origin,  is  an  evidence  of  striking 
congenital  variation.  And  the  originality  of  a  new 
individual  is  not  destroyed,  even  if  we  are  partially 
able  to  explain  his  new  tendencies  as  the  resultant 
of  the  combination  of  qualities  from  each  parent. 
For  the  fact  remains  that  these  quahties  are  in  him 
combined  in  a  new  and  unique  unity  of  psychical 
life  and  consciousness. 

Over  against  the  failure  of  the  scientific  deter- 
minist  to  account  for  the  unity  and  uniqueness  of 
the  psychical  individual,  we  are  entitled  to  set  the 
immediate  and  inexpugnable  consciousness  of  the 
individual  that  in  his  attentive  consideration  of  the 
problems  of  his  Hfe,  in  the  acceptance  or  rejection 
of  ideal  standards,  in  short,  in  rational  choice  and 
deliberate  action,  he  is  a  real  and  unitary  centre 
of  conscious  action.  The  reaUty  of  human  freedom 
in  any  vital  sense  depends  on  the  real  and  persistent 
unity  of  the  self.  The  consciousness  of  this  origina- 
tive and  self -determining  unity  is  common  to  all  men 
having  the  power  of  reason  and  the  sense  of  moral 
obhgation.  It  is  only  weakened  and  rendered  doubt- 
ful by  sophisticated  reflections  in  the  absence  of 
urgent  need  for  decision  and  action.  When  this 
urgent  need  arises  the  scientific  determinist,  too,  acts 
as  if  he  were  the  responsible  author  of  his  actions, 
and  society  treats  him  as  if  he  were. 


THE    HEART   OF   MAN  45 

The  consciousness  of  personal  freedom  and  re- 
sponsibility will  still  find  its  witness  in  the  stress  and 
crises  of  life,  in  moments  when  the  various  currents 
of  our  being  meet  in  conflict,  when  we  are  conscious 
of  making  momentous  decisions  and  when  the  wholly 
inner  and  spiritual,  but  no  less  undeniable,  appeal 
and  authority  of  ethical  principles  or  ideals  stand 
in  unflinching  opposition  to  the  lures  of  appetite, 
self-interest,  and  creature  ease.  And  this  practical 
witness  to  freedom,  in  view  of  the  part  it  plays  when 
life  runs  high  and  we  feel  masters  of  ourselves,  still 
has  a  right  to  be  heard  in  the  decision  of  the  philo- 
sophical problem. 

In  truth,  this  immediate  consciousness  of  free,  self- 
originating  activity  is  the  intuition  of  a  vital  and 
dynamic  unity  of  life  in  us.  In  his  deeds  man  feels 
this  dynamic  unity,  and  therefore,  when  he  reflects 
on  these  deeds,  he  refers  them  to  himself  and  accepts 
the  responsibility  for  them.  Our  sense  of  account- 
abihty  for  our  actions  is  strong  precisely  in  propor- 
tion to  our  immediate  feeling  of  the  vital  and  dynamic 
unity  of  our  conscious  selfhood. 

It  is  a  perfectly  legitimate  procedure  for  the  psy- 
chologist to  analyze  the  stream  of  human  conscious- 
ness into  various  aspects  —  sensations  and  impulses, 
images  and  precepts,  concepts  and  judgments, 
feeling-attitudes  and  strivings,  emotions  and 
sentiments,  etc.  We  are  not  concerned  here  with 
the  question  what  particular  scientific  analysis 
may  be  most  adequate  and  workable.    But  it  must 


46      JESUS    CHRIST    AND   CIVILIZATION    OF   TO-DAY 

not  be  forgotten  that  the  actual  self  antedates  this 
analysis  or  dissection,  and  that  these  various  psy- 
chological aspects  are  not  independent  elements 
by  whose  composition  the  unity  of  the  psychic  in- 
dividual is  constituted.  If  they  are  taken  as  actual 
independent  elements,  the  actual  self  is  resolved 
into  a  bundle  of  fictitious  abstractions.  But  if 
they  are  regarded  simply  as  artificially  isolated 
features  of  a  living  and  dynamic  unity  of  selfhood, 
these  aspects  of  consciousness,  reached  by  psycho- 
logical analysis,  have  not  only  a  warrant  in  the 
scientific  need  for  analysis,  but  they  also  contribute 
to  our  practical  knowledge  of  the  complex  life  of 
consciousness  by  giving  us  a  more  exact  insight  into 
its  modes  of  behaviour.  And,  just  as  the  actual 
living  and  functioning  organism  precedes  and  is 
the  presupposition  of  anatomical  dissection,  so  the 
reality  of  the  various  aspects  of  consciousness,  viz. 
sensation,  thought,  and  feeling,  and  the  existence 
of  a  real  and  inteUigible  mutual  relationship  or 
reciprocal  influence  amongst  them,  presupposes  the 
basic  unity  of  the  psychic  life  underlying  and  mani- 
festing itself  in  them.  The  actual  self,  which  realizes 
itself  in  manifold  processes  and  activities,  is  deeper 
and  more  comprehensive  than  any  single  aspect  or 
so-called  element  of  consciousness.  It  is  the  con- 
tinuous bearer  of  these  varying  aspects.  Hence  when 
our  psychological  and  sociological  analysis  has  done 
its  work  of  splitting  up  the  individual  soul  into  a 
manifold  of  distinct  aspects,  tendencies,  etc.,  and 


THE    HEART    OF    MAN  47 

has  shown  the  dependence  of  this  manifold  on  the 
influence  of  other  psychic  individuals  as  well  as  on 
social  traditions;  in  order  to  get  back  the  reality 
implied  in  all  this  analysis  and  genetic  explanation, 
we  must  return  to  the  dynamic  centre  or  unity  of 
psychic  life,  which  is  the  presupposition  alike  of 
scientific  analysis  and  of  the  actual  development  of 
selves  in  society. 

It  is  in  the  immediate  feeling  of  this  dynamic  and 
continuing  unity  of  rational  life  that  the  root  of  the 
beHef  in  the  freedom  of  the  will  is  to  be  found.  Con- 
sequently the  sense  of  freedom  is  strongest  when  life 
runs  highest,  when  the  individual  feels  the  stirring 
of  new  depths  within  himself,  when  fresh  possibilities 
of  choice  and  action  are  welHng  into  consciousness. 
In  short,  when  man  feels  afresh  the  worth  of  life  and 
the  fundamental  significance  of  its  problems,  he  feels 
most  his  power  of  self -direction.  Now  it  is  precisely 
to  this  sense  of  inward  freedom  and  worth  that  Jesus 
appeals.  He  rests  his  call  to  repentance,  his  rebukes 
for  wrong-doing,  his  summons  to  face  about  and  take 
up  a  new  life,  on  the  sense  of  accountability  and  the 
power  of  making  a  fresh  start,  which  is  what  the  com- 
mon man  understands  by  freedom.  Furthermore, 
Jesus  requires  that  the  individual  shall  make  the 
decision  for  himself,  thoughtfully  and  carefully  in 
full  view  of  the  alternatives  before  him.  He  will 
have  no  one  decide  lightly  or  bHndly  to  follow  him. 
He  constantly  demands  a  deliberate  decision,  puts 


48      JESUS   CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

men  to  the  test,  and  insists  that  they  face  the  issues 
squarely.  *'  Sell  that  thou  hast  and  give  to  the  poor" 
(Matt.  19:21).  ''If  any  man  will  come  after  me, 
let  him  deny  himself,  and  take  up  his  cross  and  fol- 
low me  "  (Matt.  16:  24,  Mark  8:  34).  ''Think  not 
that  I  am  come  to  send  peace  on  earth"  (Matt. 
10:34).  "Let  the  dead  bury  their  dead"  (Matt. 
8:  22).  "If  any  man  come  to  me,  and  hate  not  his 
father,  and  mother,  and  wife,  and  children,  and 
brethren  and  sisters,  yea,  and  his  own  life  also,  he 
cannot  be  my  disciple"  (Luke  14:  26).  Everywhere 
we  find  the  appeal  directed  to  the  fully  conscious 
deliberate  will.  Jesus'  very  call  to  repentance  is 
a  challenge  to  freedom  —  to  a  fresh  and  conscious 
affirmation  of  ideals.  He  stirs  up  the  depths  of 
the  soul.  He  arouses  the  latent  spiritual  energies. 
All  his  teaching  presupposes  a  fundamental  and 
controlling  unity  of  life  in  the  individual,  a  single 
originative  and  governing  principle  of  action  which 
is  the  very  root  of  the  soul.  This  principle  is  the 
heart  0}  man.  "A  good  man  out  of  the  good  treas- 
ure of  his  heart  bringeth  forth  that  which  is  good; 
and  an  evil  man  out  of  the  evil  treasure  of  his  heart 
bringeth  forth  that  which  is  evil;  for  of  the  abun- 
dance of   the  heart   his   mouth  speaketh"   (Luke 

6:45)- 

This  appeal  of  Jesus  to  a  man's  inward  sense  of 
freedom  does  not  imply  that  action  may  be  performed 
without  a  sufficient  motive  or  without  reference  to 
character.     On  the  contrary  it  is  the  state  of  the  heart 


THE    HEART   OF   MAN  49 

or  inward  disposition  that  determines  the  action. 
For  ''Where  your  treasure  is,  there  will  your  heart 
be  also"  (Matt.  6:  21,  Luke  12 :  34).  The  strongest 
motive  is  the  reaction  of  the  heart  or  inward  self  to 
the  incitements  afforded  by  one's  situation  in  life. 
Hence  his  constant  insistence  on  the  development 
of  the  right  inward  disposition  —  the  cultivation  of 
right  thoughts  and  feelings.  The  entire  Sermon 
on  the  Mount  is  a  declaration  of  the  fundamental 
and  central  importance  for  life  and  conduct  of  a 
right  disposition.  When  a  modern  psychologist 
says  that  all  ideas  are  motor,  i.e.  tend  to  issue  in  action 
and  that  to  think  is  a  moral  action,  he  is  giving  gen- 
eralized expression  to  what  Jesus  teaches  in  regard 
to  the  relation  between  the  inward  attitude  of  feeling 
and  thought  and  the  outward  act.  "Not  that  which 
goeth  into  the  mouth  defileth  a  man ;  but  that  which 
cometh  out  of  the  mouth,  this  defileth  a  man"  (Matt. 
15:11).  "For out  of  the  heart  proceed  evil  thoughts," 
etc.  (Matt.  15: 19).  "For  a  good  man  out  of  the 
good  treasure  of  his  heart  bringeth  forth  good  things ; 
and  an  evil  man  out  of  the  evil  treasure  of  his  heart 
bringeth  forth  that  which  is  evil"  (Luke  6:  45). 

The  final  determining  cause  of  action  then  is, 
according  to  Jesus,  the  inward  disposition  or  heart. 
Here  he  is  at  one  with  a  sound  psychology.  But  this 
inward  disposition  or  heart  of  man  is  not  a  fixed  and 
finished  product.  A  man's  disposition,  as  this  has 
been  developed  by  previous  deeds,  will  determine 
the  motive  which  shall  make  strongest  appeal  to  him 


50      JESUS    CHRIST    AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

now.  But  this  disposition  in  turn  is  the  resultant 
of  the  self-determining  activity  of  a  living  and  de- 
veloping unity  of  selfhood  or  personaHty.  The 
true  ethical  or  spiritual  development  of  man  is  a 
movement  from  centre  to  periphery.  Man  is  not 
free  from  instant  to  instant  to  act  in  opposition  to 
his  prevaiHng  habits  of  thought  and  action.  But 
the  habitual  channels  of  mental  movement  are  the 
resultants  of  his  own  self-determining  thoughts  and 
choices.  A  man's  past  lives  on  in  his  present  life 
just  because  it  is  his  own  past. 

Freedom  of  choice,  then,  moves  not  only  within 
the  limits  set  by  a  man's  heredity  and  circumstances, 
but,  as  well,  within  the  limits  set  by  his  own  self- 
initiated  deeds  in  the  past,  which  have  moulded  the 
plastic  materials  of  his  nature  into  a  certain  set  of 
heart.  Jesus  recognizes  fully  these  limits  to  alter- 
natives in  human  action.  "For  this  people's  heart 
is  waxed  gross,  and  their  ears  are  dull  of  hearing, 
and  their  eyes  they  have  closed;  lest  at  any  time 
they  should  see  with  their  eyes,  and  hear  with  their 
ears,  and  should  understand  with  their  hearty  and 
should  be  converted,  and  I  should  heal  them" 
(Matt.  13: 15). 

Indeed,  this  determination  of  present  action  and 
feeling  by  past  feeling  and  action  is  the  condition  of 
stability  in  goodness  of  character  as  well  in  evil 
habits.  Without  this  fixation  of  mental  tendency 
all  the  toil  of  right  thinking  and  the  effort  of  right 
action  would  have  no  lasting  result  and  the  moral 


THE    HEART   OF   MAN  5 1 

world  would  be  a  chaos.  One  could  no  more  count 
on  the  effective  goodness  of  the  good  man  than  on 
the  destructive  badness  of  the  bad.  Nevertheless, 
in  spite  of  the  power  of  evil  habits  and  the  lasting 
effects  of  sin,  Jesus  finds  that  the  worst  quality  of 
all  in  human  life  is  a  spiritual  insensibiUty  and 
inertia  produced  by  a  mere  routine  pursuit  of  good- 
ness according  to  form  and  prescription.  Hence 
his  constant  condemnation  of  the  respectable  Phari- 
sees and  his  preference  for  the  humble  and  contrite 
publican  and  sinner.  Why  this  reversal  of  accepted 
values  on  his  part  ?  Because  he  finds  the  true  destiny 
of  man  in  the  constant  upward  striving  toward 
a  superhuman  goal  beyond  the  conventions  and 
prescriptions  of  estabUshed  society.  He  assumes  in 
man  the  power,  in  spite  of  sin  and  evil  habit,  to  break 
away  from  his  past.  He  appeals  to  the  inextinguish- 
able possibility  of  a  further  ethical  development.  He 
grounds  his  call  to  repentance  and  a  new  life  on  the 
infinite  spiritual  opportunity  and  destiny  which 
resides  in  the  deeps  of  every  man's  nature.  His 
preference  of  the  contrite  sinner  over  the  self- 
righteous  Pharisee  hes  in  the  former's  openness  to 
spiritual  influences.  In  the  pubhcan's  sense  of 
weakness  and  failure  there  dwells  a  responsiveness 
to  Jesus'  call  to  the  pursuit  of  perfection.  The 
very  sense  of  sin  and  un worthiness  is  the  first  awaken- 
ing of  the  inward  vision  to  the  infinite  vistas  of 
spiritual  Hfe. 
Tied  and  bound  though  he  be  by  the  chains  of 


52      JESUS  CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

his  past  sins,  in  the  humble-minded  publican, 
measuring  himself  as  nothing  beside  Divine  Perfec- 
tion, there  is  stirring  the  inward  core  of  spiritual 
life.  He  is  open  to  the  appeal  of  hoUness.  He  is 
stirred  by  the  motive  of  love  which  gives  him  a  new 
outlook  and  a  new  reverence  for  himself  as  he  may 
be.  He  sees  himself  as  the  centre  of  new  possibiUties. 
Actual,  concrete  freedom  then,  as  Jesus  conceives 
it,  is  the  power  of  hearkening  to  the  call  for  spiritual 
progress,  is  the  responsiveness  to  the  demands  of 
love  and  holiness,  is  the  possibility  of  ever  making 
a  fresh  start  in  the  ethical  or  spiritual  life.  Free- 
dom for  him  is  not  the  abstract  possibiUty  of  an 
alternative  in  every  single  case  of  action.  It  is  the 
persistent  possibility  of  a  man^s  choosing  his  true 
destiny,  of  ever  trying  anew  to  be  himself  in  the  best 
sense.  A  man  must  react  somehow  to  every  in- 
fluence, and  concrete  freedom  means  that  a  man 
may  react  in  the  long  run  to  the  better  influences, 
that  he  may  ultimately  bring  his  true  and  spiritual 
self  to  expression  in  his  character  and  deeds. 

The  heart  of  man  for  Jesus,  then,  is  the  central 
or  controlling  life-principle;  freedom  is  the  rule  of 
this  central  principle  both  over  the  impulses  which 
spring  from  the  flesh  and  the  merely  legal  moraUty 
of  an  existing  respectability  of  convention. 

Wherever  the  inward  nature  continues  to  grow 
in  power  and  control  of  the  mere  brute  facts  of  in- 
dividual impulse  and  of  social  convention,  there  is 
freedom.    There  is  a  developing  unity  of  the  in- 


THE   HEART   OF   MAN 


53 


ward  self  which  is  at  the  same  time  an  enlargement 
of  the  spiritual  beyond  the  merely  given  or  natural 
selfhood.  And  the  truth  of  Jesus'  conception  of 
the  heart  or  central  spiritual  principle  and  of  its 
freedom  is  witnessed  by  the  common  consciousness 
of  civiHzed  man.  This  truth  is  reflected  in  the  in- 
expugnable conviction  of  the  normal  man  that  he 
can  act  for  himself  and  that  he  ought  to  direct  his 
own  life  in  one  channel  rather  than  another.  And 
the  feeling  of  a  unity  in  our  inward  Uves,  the  fluc- 
tuating but  ever  growing  sense,  in  the  normal  man, 
of  the  wholeness  and  integrity  of  the  self,  is  the  re- 
flection in  consciousness  of  this  central  principle. 
The  feeling  of  unity  in  the  human  self  is  a  conscious 
process  which  reaches  its  floodtide  in  our  most  sig- 
nificant actions.  And  the  very  deepest  significance 
of  our  deeds  is  that  they  express  and  realize  this 
inward  unity  of  life. 

There  are  two  postulates  on  which  the  entire 
ethical  or  spiritual  life  of  man  rests  and  which 
underlie  all  the  toil  and  thought  by  which  man  has 
moved  upward  in  the  course  of  civilization  from 
the  brute.  Unless  these  postulates  have  a  basis 
in  reality,  it  is  difficult  to  see  what  meaning  the  strug- 
gle of  man  toward  a  higher  culture  can  have,  and  it 
is  even  more  difficult  to  see  what  rational  meaning 
or  worth  there  can  be  in  the  individual  life.  These 
postulates  are :  i.  That  man  has  the  power  of  de- 
termining his  own  action  and  thought  toward  spir- 
itual ends.     2.    That  the  rational,  free,  and  ethical 


54      JESUS    CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

life  of  the  individual  is  in  contact  or  positive  relation 
with  a  supreme  spiritual  life.  The  conscious  reali- 
zation and  functioning  of  the  spiritual  possibilities 
indwelling  in  the  heart  of  man  is  the  growth  in  in- 
ward unity  and  power.  And  this  growth  cannot 
take  place  except  by  contact  with  a  larger  spiritual 
life  which  supplies  the  proper  stimulus  and  atmos- 
phere for  the  individual  life.  "I  am  come  that  they 
might  have  life,  and  that  they  might  have  it  more 
abundantly"  (John  io:io).  "For  a  man's  life 
consisteth  not  in  the  abundance  of  the  things  which 
he  possesseth"  (Luke  12 :  15). 

Freedom,  then,  is  the  having  a  conscious  rational 
life.  But  this  life  in  the  individual  depends  on  the 
touch  of  a  cosmic  hfe,  and  the  very  heart  of  man  is 
the  indestructible  potentiality  of  the  inward  and 
personal  spirit  to  grow  in  contact  with  a  larger  life. 
As  men  have  gained  control  over  nature  and  become 
masters  of  the  external  conditions  of  existence,  they 
have  ever  turned  their  inquiry  with  passionate  long- 
ing toward  the  nature,  meaning,  and  destiny  of 
the  inward  and  conscious  life.  Never  was  this  per- 
haps so  true  as  in  the  present  age,  with  its  psycho- 
logical drift  in  literature,  art,  science ;  with  its  poig- 
nant and  sometimes  even  morbid  introspectiveness, 
its  acute  self-consciousness  of  individuahty.  We 
are  making  rapid  progress  in  psychological  analysis 
of  the  individual  and  society  and  in  the  psycho- 
logical interpretation  of  the  past.  But  if  this  analysis 
shall  live  and  bear  fruit,  it  must  be  accompanied  by 


THE   HEART  OF   MAN  55 

a  living  synthesis  in  experience  and  action.  We  must 
see  life  whole,  and  we  can  only  do  this  if  we  have 
a  comprehensive  insight  into  its  purpose  and  faith 
in  its  destiny. 

Insight  into  the  integral  meaning  and  goal  of  life 
and  direction  how  to  reach  that  goal  are  precisely  what 
Jesus  offers.  After  these  preliminary  considerations 
of  the  general  presuppositions  of  the  ethical  life,  we 
are  now  ready  more  fully  to  consider  his  interpreta- 
tion of  life. 


CHAPTER    IV 

THE  CONDUCT  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL  LIFE 

Freedom  and  scope  for  the  development  and 
expression  of  the  individual  life  is  the  unfailing 
index  of  a  high  civilization.  Without  room  and 
opportunity  for  the  free  play  of  the  individual,  no 
society  can  be  rich  in  great  personahties.  And  all 
great  achievements  in  art,  literature,  science,  and 
practical  life  originate  in  creative  personahties. 
In  the  ancient  world  the  greatest  number  of  creative 
personahties  in  art  and  science  were  produced 
amongst  the  Greeks.  And,  amongst  the  Greeks, 
it  was  Athens,  with  its  democracy  and  its  free 
movement  of  Hfe,  that  gave  to  the  world  its  great- 
est intellectual  and  aesthetic  heritage. 

In  religion  it  was  the  theocratic  commonwealth  of 
Israel,  with  its  acceptance  of  a  God  who  had  made 
a  free  covenant  with  the  nation,  based  on  principles 
of  social  justice,  its  well-ordered  system  for  the  ad- 
ministration of  justice,  and  its  provisions  for  the  re- 
demption of  the  debtor  and  the  ahen,  that  gave  to 
the  world  the  largest  number  of  great  ethical  and 
rehgious  personalities  and  leaders.  In  short,  the 
Hebrew  religion,  estabHshed  by  Moses  and  deepened 

56 


THE  CONDUCT   OF   THE   INDIVIDUAL  LIFE        57 

by  the  prophets,  was,  in  contrast  to  the  nature- wor- 
ship of  surrounding  peoples  and  of  the  original  He- 
brew tribes  themselves,  an  ethical  religion;  since  it 
was  based  on  the  moral  choice,  by  the  people,  of  a 
God  whose  supreme  characteristic  was  that  he  had 
laid  the  foundations,  and  would  maintain  the  prin- 
ciples, of  righteous  deaHng  between  man  and  man. 
The  moral  struggle,  the  call  to  make  a  choice  as  to 
whom  they  will  serve,  that  we  find  so  frequently 
in  the  pages  of  the  Old  Testament,  is  the  expression 
of  the  birth,  through  conflict  with  mere  nature- 
worship,  with  its  cruelties,  oppression,  and  sensuality, 
of  an  ethical  consciousness  which  defines  the  obliga- 
tions of  justice  and  mercy  between  man  and  man. 
It  is  true  that  the  relation  of  Jehovah  was  conceived 
to  be  primarily  toward  the  nation,  but  it  is  equally 
true  that  the  moral  basis  of  this  relation  brought  a 
recognition  of  the  rights  and  worth  of  the  individual. 
In  the  rendering  of  allegiance  to  Jehovah  as  against 
Baal,  Moloch,  and  Ashtaroth,  mere  unethical,  nature- 
deities,  and  in  the  fulfilment  of  the  moral  obligations 
involved  in  this  allegiance,  the  individual  conscience 
necessarily  came  into  play.^ 

Our  recognition  of  the  moral  worth  of  the  indi- 
vidual life  is  a  joint  heritage  from  Greece  and  Israel. 

^  In  the  prophet  Ezekiel,  the  individual  quality  of  right  conduct 
becomes  fully  explicit.  "The  soul  that  sinneth,  it  shall  die:  the 
son  shall  not  bear  the  iniquity  of  the  father,  neither  shall  the 
father  bear  the  iniquity  of  the  son.  The  righteousness  of  the 
righteous  shall  be  upon  him,  and  the  wickedness  of  the  wicked 
shall  be  upon  him"  (Ezekiel  18:  20). 


58      JESUS    CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION    OF   TO-DAY 

And  from  the  beginning  of  modern  times  up  to  the 
twentieth  century,  European  civiHzation  has  steadily 
progressed  toward  a  fuller  recognition  of  freedom 
and  scope  for  the  individual,  toward  a  deeper  sense 
of  the  meaning  of  the  personal  life,  and  toward  a 
better  provision  for  the  nurture  and  culture  of  the 
personal  spirit.  The  movement  of  western  civiliza- 
tion has  been  on  the  whole  in  the  direction  of  a  deeper 
self-consciousness  and  a  fuller  personal  freedom. 

This  movement  received  a  new  impetus  on  the 
religious  and  ethical  side  from  the  Protestant 
reformers.  When  a  time-honoured  institution  (i.e. 
the  Mediaeval  Church)  was  tried  at  the  bar  of  the  per- 
sonal conscience  and  found  wanting,  the  worth  and 
freedom  of  the  individual  in  religion  came  to  explicit 
expression.  The  same  movement,  on  its  intellectual 
side,  began  with  the  rebirth  of  classical  learning,  the 
rediscovery  of  nature,  and  the  growth  of  an  indepen- 
dent science  untrammelled  by  the  authority  of  Aris- 
totle and  of  the  Mediaeval  Schoolmen.  The  doubt 
of  Descartes,  who  finds  a  sure  and  fixed  point  of 
departure  for  science  only  in  his  immediate  personal 
consciousness  as  a  reasoning  being,  burst  the  trammels 
of  dogma,  and  the  modern  intellect  steps  forth  free 
in  its  own  prescriptive  right  to  question  and  inquire 
from  the  facts  of  nature  and  the  laws  of  reason. 
Henceforth,  the  way  to  universal  truth  lies  only 
through  the  activity  and  cooperation  of  thought 
in  the  minds  of  individuals.  The  universality  and 
objectivity  of  truth  can  only  be  established  through 


THE   CONDUCT    OF   THE    INDIVIDUAL   LIFE      59 

its  witness  in  the  common  reason  of  the  brother- 
hood of  science.  Henceforth  the  way  to  genuine 
virtue  and  the  highest  good  lies  through  the  originat- 
ing activity  and  the  consenting  practical  reason  of 
the  individual  man.  A  universal  moral  quality  and 
a  common  good  can  now  be  attained  only  through 
their  witness  in  the  common  consciousness  of  the 
brotherhood  of  a  rational  humanity;  not  through 
obedience  to  the  prescriptions  of  any  absolute  exter- 
nal authority. 

Authority  becomes  now  subsidiary  and  derivative. 
It  must  constantly  be  tested  and  revised  by  the  expert 
individual,  by  the  virtuoso  in  science  and  in  conduct. 
Historical  institutions  can  no  longer  claim  the  blind 
unquestioning  allegiance  of  the  individual  will. 
They  must  commend  themselves  by  their  vitality 
and  inherent  reasonableness,  by  their  power  of  and 
readiness  for  readjustment  to  the  demands  of  spir- 
itual progress  in  the  individual. 

And,  since  moral  and  ethical  quahty  is  now  seen 
to  be,  as  Buddha,  Socrates,  and  Christ  had  already 
taught,  an  attitude  of  the  inward  disposition,  a 
function  of  the  heart  or  spirit  of  man,  e^eryjnherited 
custom  and  historic  institution JhowjeverJiQary,  must 
be  fested^arfHe  bar  of  .the.„ethical. ox  practical  reason 
in  the^"s6ul  of  the  individual.  We  learn  that,  if  the 
worth  and  dignity  of  the  will  and  reason  of  the  in- 
dividual person  are  violated,  so  far  there  is  no  real 
worth  or  dignity  in  the  world.  All  genuine  moral 
quality  is  an  attribute  of  individual  persons.    Social 


6o     JESUS   CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

institutions  and  traditions  have  ethical  significance 
only  in  so  far  as  they  are  taken  up  into  and  minister 
to  the  inner  Ufe  of  the  spiritual  individual.  All  true 
ethical  action  must  originate  from  within.  All  truly 
worthful  movement  must  be  from  the  centre  of  life  to 
the  periphery.  All  real  spiritual  life  will  irradiate 
from  the  heart  of  the  individual  outward  into  that 
nexus  of  social  relations  which  binds  individuals 
together.  The  growth  in  freedom  and  opportunity 
for  the  individual,  which  is  the  characteristic  mark  of 
modern  times,  is  due  to  the  recognition  of  the  supreme 
worth  of  inwardness  in  life.  It  is  the  discovery  that 
in  the  inward  or  spiritual  consciousness  and  attitude 
on  the  part  of  the  individual  person  there  is  alone  to 
be  found  genuine  ethical  reaUty.  But  the  free  move- 
ment of  this  inward  life  requires  that  the  individual 
shall  not  be  trammelled  and  repressed  by  a  mass  of 
externally  imposed  laws,  institutions,  and  authorities, 
by  cut-and-dried  formulas  and  systems.  *'The 
wind  bloweth  where  it  listeth,  and  thou  hearest  the 
sound  thereof,  but  canst  not  tell  whence  it  cometh, 
and  whither  it  goeth :  so  is  every  one  that  is  bom  of 
the  Spirit "  (John  3 :  8). 

Nothing  shows  more  emphatically  the  vital  mo- 
dernity of  a  poet,  such  as  Browning,  than  his  insistent 
emphasis  on  the  supreme  significance  of  the  hidden 
movements  in  each  individual  life,  his  constant 
questioning  of  the  ethical  worth  of  conventionally 
right  actions  performed  at  the  expense  of  some 
genuinely  inward  individual  impulse,  and  his  no  less 


THE   CONDUCT   OF   THE   INDIVIDUAL   LIFE        6l 

constant  assertion  of  the  worth  of  unseen  hidden 
motives  and  of  actions  that  are  perhaps  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  outer  world  insignificant,  as  the 
final  criterion  of  a  Hfe's  meaning. 

I  quote  three  passages  at  random  illustrating  these 
aspects  of  Browning's  doctrine  of  the  supremacy  of 
inward  and  individual  values. 

"  I'm  queen  myself  at  bals-parey 
I've  married  a  rich  old  lord, 
And  you're  dubbed  knight  and  an  R.  A. 

Each  life's  unfulfilled,  you  see; 
It  hangs  still,  patchy  and  scrappy. 
We  have  not  sighed  deep,  laughed  free, 
Starved,  feasted,  despaired,  —  been  happy 

And  nobody  calls  you  a  dunce, 

And  people  suppose  me  clever : 

This  could  have  happened  but  once, 

And  we  missed  it,  lost  it  forever."  —  Youth  and  Art 

"  Stake  your  counter  as  boldly  every  whit, 
Venture  as  warily,  use  the  same  skill. 
Do  your  best,  whether  winning  or  losing  it, 

If  you  choose  to  play !  —  is  my  principle. 
Let  a  man  contend  to  the  uttermost 
For  his  life's  set  prize,  be  it  what  it  will  I 

The  counter  our  lovers  staked  was  lost 

As  surely  as  if  it  were  lawful  coin : 

And  the  sin  I  impute  to  each  frustrate  ghost 

Is  the  unlit  lamp  and  the  ungirt  loin, 
Though  the  end  in  view  was  a  vice,  I  say. 


62      JESUS    CHRIST    AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

You  of  the  virtue  (we  issue  join) 
How  strive  you  ?     De  te  fahulal " 

—  The  Statue  and  the  Bust. 

"  Not  on  the  vulgar  mass 
Called  'work,'  must  sentence  pass, 
Things  done,  that  took  the  eye  and  had  the  price; 
O'er  which,  from  level  stand. 
The  low  world  laid  its  hand 
Found  straightway  to.  its  mind,  could  value  in  a  trice. 

But  all,  the  world's  coarse  thumb 
And  finger  failed  to  plumb, 
So  passed  in  making  up  the  main  account: 
All  instincts  immature, 
All  purposes  unsure, 

That  weighed  not  as  his  work,  yet  swelled  the  man's 
amount,"  etc.  —  Rahhi  Ben  Ezra. 

Compare 

"  All  who  have  meant  good  work  with  their  whole  hearts, 
have  done  good  work,  although  they  may  die  before  they 
have  the  time  to  sign  it."  —  R.  L.  Stevenson,  ^s  Triplex. 

In  these  words  we  find  striking  expression  of  the 
inward  or  spiritual  character  of  all  ethical  values  and 
of  the  supreme  dignity  and  significance  of  the  in- 
dividual's life.  We  find  clear  utterance  of  the 
principle  that  the  ethical  or  spiritual  quality  which 
alone  gives  worth  to  life  must  be  felt  and  lived  by  a 
man  jor  himself,  i.e.  consciously  and  deliberately. 

And  this  sense  of  the  supreme  ethical  worth  of 
the  individual  is  the  inspiring  and  redeeming  principle 
of  the  world-wide  movement  of  democracy  to-day. 


THE    CONDUCT   OF   THE   INDIVIDUAL   LIFE       63 

This  is  the  higher  source  and  sanction  of  social 
reforms,  of  the  present  social  unrest,  and  of  all 
movements  toward  the  sociaHzation  of  the  means 
and  instruments  of  the  common  Ufe.  All  the  mighty 
streams  of  tendency  that  to-day  are  moving  toward 
social  betterment,  whether  blindly  or  well-directed, 
have  their  basic  ethical  principle  in  the  demand  that 
the  individual  man  shall  have  full  opportunity  to 
develop  his  own  hfe,  to  make  the  best  of  his  own 
possibiUties  in  action  and  feeling.  These  agitations 
and  half-defined  longings  are  symptoms  of  the  quest 
for  an  inward  unity  and  harmony  of  spiritual  ex- 
perience and  of  the  insistent  demand  that  the  outer 
conditions  of  existence  shall  not  hinder  this  quest. 
We  must  not  overlook,  however,  the  confusion  and 
the  dangers  incident  to  these  movements  of  reform 
and  progress.  The  individual's  own  nature  and  the 
permanent  conditions  of  his  true  hfe  remain  un- 
defined. Of  what  sort  is  the  individual  in  whom  re- 
sides supreme  worth  and  dignity?  What  are  his 
characteristics,  and  in  the  satisfaction  of  what  desires 
does  he  come  to  his  own  true  life?  Not  the  satis- 
faction of  every  random  impulse  and  not  the  grati- 
fication of  every  passing  whim  shall  be  the  condition 
of  the  best  life  for  the  individual.  And  yet,  the 
natural  individuality  of  man  seems  to  consist  simply 
of  a  specific  combination  of  blind  congenital  impulses, 
instincts,  and  desires.  Each  separate  self  comes  to 
conscious  being  with  his  own  peculiar  mixture  and 
intensity  of  biological  impulses  and  interests.    For 


64      JESUS   CHRIST   AND  CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

many  men  the  goods  of  the  palate  possess  stronger 
interest  than  poetry  or  art,  for  some  even  stronger 
interest  than  truth.  By  what  criterion  shall  one 
determine  the  respective  worth  of  these  individual 
differences  in  practical  taste? 

And,  again,  there  seems  to  be  no  real  stability  of 
Hfe,  no  central  and  abiding  unity  in  the  natural 
individual,  i.e,  in  the  individual  considered  as  a 
bundle  of  inborn  impulses  and  appetites.  He  is 
blown  about  by  every  wind  of  impulse,  and  he  is 
always  the  prey  of  the  stronger  individual  or  the  tool 
of  social  custom  and  convention.  If  the  good  of  the 
individual  consisted  simply  in  the  unlimited  satis- 
faction of  his  natural  appetites,  the  attempt  to 
reform  society  with  a  view  to  realizing  this  good 
would  be  foredoomed  to  failure.  Since  the  natural 
appetites  are  themselves  insatiable  and  know 
neither  reason  nor  Umit,  we  should  have,  with  the 
removal  of  restraint  and  the  weakening  of  social  con- 
ventions, simply  anarchy  and  chaos :  "the  war  of  all 
against  all." 

Furthermore,  without  the  possession  of  a  universal 
and  abiding  spiritual  principle,  the  individual  has  no 
resource  or  resistive  power  against  the  encroach- 
ments and  the  tyranny  of  the  mere  machinery  of 
social  life.  Without  this  spiritual  centre  he  is 
condemned,  so  long  as  the  existing  social  machinery 
maintains  itself  in  a  democratic  society,  to  be  the 
creature  of  the  commonplace  and  the  superficial,  of 
mental  inertia  and  conventional  mediocrity.     The 


THE   CONDUCT   OF  THE   INDIVIDUAL   LIFE      65 

endeavour  to  realize  better  social  conditions  of  life 
for  the  individual  must  defeat  itself  unless  the 
individual  be  able  to  find  a  higher  principle  of  action 
than  mere  social  conformity  or  present  utility.  In 
the  absence  of  this  spiritual  source  of  Hfe,  in  default 
of  any  universal  ethical  and  controlling  power  in  his 
inner  being,  the  soul  of  the  individual  must  be 
crushed  in  the  machinery  of  work  and  his  life  dried 
up  in  the  routine  of  conformity,  his  spontaneity  \ 
destroyed  by  the  tyranny  of  the  commonplace  and 
the  vulgar.  We  see  these  influences  at  work  even 
now  in  the  creation  of  a  dead  level  of  uniformity  in 
dress,  manners,  bearing,  opinions,  etc.,  to  which  the 
individual  is  dragged  down  and  made  to  conform. 
We  see  it  at  work  in  the  endeavour  to  make  the 
counting  of  heads,  irrespective  of  what  they  contain, 
the  test  of  wisdom,  truth,  and  righteousness.  The 
authority  of  the  majority  still  claims  to  be  the  sole 
final  authority  in  conduct  and  opinion.  The  test  of 
goodness  and  truth  becomes  utility  as  this  is 
measured  by  the  desires  and  interests  of  the  average 
man. 

And,  on  the  other  hand,  the  reaction  of  the  in- 
dividual against  this  tyranny  of  the  commonplace, 
vulgar,  and  crassly  utiUtarian  standards  of  the 
average  contemporary  social  environment  is  in 
danger  of  being  the  expression  of  mere  caprice. 
Genuine  spiritual  individuahty  is  confounded  with 
mere  eccentricity  of  will,  with  egoistic  self-assertion 
and  love  of  power. 


66      JESUS   CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

The  most  artistic  and  influential  expression  of  the 
individuaUstic  revolt  against  the  stupid  and  vulgar 
mediocrity  of  many  tendencies  in  contemporary 
social  life  to-day  is  that  of  Nietzsche.^  His  ''Over- 
man" is  the  new  and  free  individual  v^ho  will  be  the 
absolute  master  of  his  own  fate  and  so  a  law  unto 
himself.  He  will  subjugate  his  ovm  sensuous 
desires,  in  order  that  he  may  completely  control 
himself  and  so  win  control  over  the  common  herd. 
The  great  man  of  the  future,  instead  of  serving  the 
multitude,  will  be  served  by  them,  and  society  will 
exist  only  that  out  of  its  dead  level  may  arise  the 
occasional  superior  individual  who  realizes  the  '*vnll 
for  power  "  (Wille  zur  Macht).  He  is  the  ruthless 
master  of  the  crowd,  despising  the  average  man, 
rejecting  the  Christian  precepts  of  sympathy  and 
pity,  because  by  these  the  weak  and  useless  are 
preserved,  and  spurning  every  hitherto  recognized 
principle  of  action  which  interferes  with  the  as- 
sertion of  his  "  will  for  power."  He  contemns 
time-honoured  standards  of  action  and  runs  tilt 
against  the  good  as  well  as  the  evil  in  our  conven- 
tional morality.  Christian  morals  are  regarded 
as  a  conspiracy  of  the  many  weak  and  cowardly  to 
keep  in  subjection  the  few  strong  and  brave  souls. 
Nietzsche's  "  Overman "  is  the  extreme  drastic 
poetic  representation  of  a  bHnd,  capricious  revolt 
against  the  tyranny  of  the  commonplace  which  rules 

*  See  especially  his  So  Spake  Zarathustra  and  Beyond  the  Good 
and  Bad. 


THE    CONDUCT    OF   THE    INDIVIDUAL    LIFE        67 

in  contemporary  civilization.  Here  we  have  at 
least  a  vigorous  assertion  of  the  inner  v^orth  of  the 
individual,  but  v^ithout  any  clear  consciousness  of 
the  universal  spiritual  ground  or  source  of  such 
worth  and,  therefore,  devoid  of  any  positive  in- 
terpretation or  guidance  for  the  individual  life. 
Nietzsche's  doctrine  of  the  ''Overman"  ends  in 
protest,  irony,  and  capricious  paradox.  It  fails  in 
definiteness  and  coherence  for  want  of  a  positive 
and  universal  ethical  principle.  It  is  an  artistically 
expressed  revolt  without  programme  for  the  future 
or  a  definite  picture  of  the  Overman.  It  ends  in 
negation.  Nevertheless,  his  work,  especially  in 
So  Spake  Zarathustray  Beyond  the  Good  and  Bad, 
and  Genealogy  of  Morals^  has  the  great  merit 
of  calling  attention  to  the  serious  dangers  which 
threaten  the  inwardness  and  spontaneity  of  the 
individual  life  at  the  hands  of  the  commonplace 
vulgar  conventions  of  the  mere  brute  majority, 
which  threatens  to  rule  in  industrial  democracy  to- 
day, and  to  the  absolute  failure  of  mass  and  numbers 
without  serious  inteUigence  or  noble  ideals  to  sup- 
ply any  genuine  inspiration  or  specific  guidance  or 
originating  principle  for  spiritual  life.  In  truth, 
democracy  is  at  a  very  serious  pass,  since  it  threatens 
to  become  a  mere  struggle  for  sensuous  and  super- 
ficial goods.  Thoroughness  in  thought  and  fidelity 
in  deed  are  in  danger  of  departing  with  thoroughness 
in  work,  through  the  haste  to  get  something  for  noth- 
ing.   It  cannot  be  too  frequently  or  emphatically 


68      JESUS   CHRIST   AND  CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

insisted  upon  that  the  problem  of  democracy  is 
primarily  a  problem  of  conduct  and  character. 

Many  noble  spirits  to-day  have  turned  from  the 
platitudes  of  conventional  morality  and  traditional 
religion  to  seek  expression  for  spiritual  life  and 
satisfy  their  craving  for  an  inward  and  spontaneous 
individual  life  in  devotion  to  the  formative  arts. 
Art  becomes  for  such  men  a  source  of  ethical  uplift. 
The  individual  finds  in  the  devoted  contemplation 
of  beauty,  or  in  the  endeavour  after  its  adequate 
expression  in  fresh  forms,  the  means  for  the  free 
utterance  of  his  inward  life  and  for  the  pursuit  of 
harmony  and  unity  in  experience.  In  the  presence 
of  beauty,  whether  as  lover  or  as  artist,  he  finds 
himself  deHvered  from  the  gross  utihties  of  the 
market-place  and  from  the  banal  platitudes  of  the 
multitude.  He  gets  away  from  the  dead  level  of 
things  as  they  are  and  from  the  stifling  atmosphere 
of  a  mere  external  routine  of  thought  and  conduct 
into  a  freer  air,  where  things  are  not  judged  by  their 
base  uses  as  means  to  money  getting  and  sensuous 
enjoyments,  or  men  by  their  capacity  to  move  like 
docile  sheep  in  a  flock  driven  by  the  staves  of  the 
majority  vote,  inspired  by  the  commercial  gospel  of 
the  greatest  returns  for  the  least  expenditure,  and 
guided  by  the  moral  conventions  of  a  smug  and 
Pharisaic  Philistinism,  for  which  external  "success  " 
in  business  and  profession  and  social  popularity 
are  the  highest  standards  of  living. 

And  yet,  art  does  not  afford  by  itself  alone  a  uni- 


THE   CONDUCT   OF   THE   INDIVIDUAL    LIFE       69 

versal  and  abiding  principle  by  which  the  individual 
life  is  delivered  from  sensuous  caprice,  practical 
materialism,  and  egoistic  pleasure-seeking  into  a 
spiritual  realm  of  experience.  To  exercise  this 
liberating  function,  art  must  become  the  vehicle  of 
truth  in  life;  i.e.  it  must  conform  to  fundamental, 
moral,  and  spiritual  principles.  Instead  of  pandering 
to  the  senses  and  to  human  vanity  and  ostentation,  it 
must  subdue  its  sensuous  materials  in  stone  and 
colour  and  sound  into  the  embodiments  of  ideals. 
It  must  create  forms  that  are  true  to  the  highest  and 
most  universal  principles  of  living.  And  these 
principles  are  ethical.  Art  is  the  expression  and 
ministrant  of  life,  not  its  creator.  Great  art  has 
always  been  the  outcome  of  exalted  emotions  and 
exalted  ideas.  The  Gothic  cathedrals  of  Europe 
embody  the  reUgious  aspirations  and  emotions  of  the 
Middle  Ages.  The  painting  of  the  early  Renais- 
sance expresses  the  union  of  Christianity  and  human- 
ism in  the  new  learning.  The  noblest  music  of  the 
nineteenth  century  is  the  utterance  of  the  aspirations 
of  the  human  spirit  quickened  by  the  enlarged  sense 
of  the  infinitude  of  nature  and  of  the  manifold  and 
complex  relations  of  the  human  soul  to  nature 
brought  about  by  the  discoveries  of  science.  And 
great  poetry,  from  Homer  and  Dante  and  Shakespeare 
to  Goethe  and  Browning,  has  always  been  informed 
and  moulded  by  the  creative  spirit  of  a  people  or  an 
age  assimilated  and  unified  in  the  living  genius  of  an 
individual. 


70    JESUS   CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

Art,  then,  as  well  as  what  we  commonly  call 
conduct^  requires  for  its  development  the  guidance  of 
ideas  or  principles  of  life.  Without  truth  or  j&delity 
to  fundamental  principles  of  experience  and  conduct, 
art  becomes  capricious  and  illusory,  and  the  pleasure 
it  yields  becomes  hollow  and  transient.  Art  can  add 
a  lasting  grace  to  life  and  give  genuine  refreshment 
to  the  spirit  of  man  only  if  it  embody,  in  harmony 
with  the  truth  of  things,  some  phase  of  life  and  ex- 
perience which  has  a  permanent  worth  independent 
of  the  mere  caprice  or  sensuous  enjoyment  of  the 
moment.  In  other  words,  the  function  of  art  in  life 
is  to  stir  up  noble  emotion,  and  noble  emotion 
depends  for  its  purity  and  permanence  on  a  contact 
of  the  individual  soul  with  the  ultimate  principles 
of  conduct  and  of  being. 

The  freedom  and  worth  of  the  inward  life  in  the 
individual,  then,  can  be  realized  only  if  his  self- 
initiated  actions  and  his  private  experiences  have  an 
objective  and  universal  basis  in  an  over-individual 
spiritual  life.  Freedom  from  convention  may  mean 
riot  and  license.  Inwardness  of  life  may  be  distorted 
into  mere  egoistic  pleasure-seeking  or  anarchical 
c^.price.  True  spiritual  freedom  must  repose  on 
obedience  to  a  supreme  spiritual  principle.  Ethical 
inwardness  of  life  must  be  won  in  the  service  of 
and  in  communion  with  a  universal  ethical  life.  If 
human  personaHty  is  to  possess  real  worth,  this  must 
be  won  in  the  service  of  absolute  values. 

And  Jesus  offers  this  universal  basis  for  the  in- 


THE    CONDUCT    OF   THE    INDIVIDUAL    LIFE        7 1 

dividual  life.  His  appeal  is  throughout  to  the  in- 
ward spirit  as  the  governing  principle  of  the  in- 
dividual. "Ye  have  heard  that  it  was  said  by  them 
of  old  time,  Thou  shalt  not  commit  aduhery:  But 
I  say  unto  you,  that  whoso  looketh  on  a  woman  to 
lust  after  her  hath  committed  adultery  with  her 
already  in  his  heart"  (Matt.  5:27-28).  "The 
light  of  the  body  is  the  eye:  If  therefore  thine  eye 
be  single,  thy  whole  body  shall  be  full  of  light " 
(Matt.  6:  22).  "Blessed  are  the  pure  in  heart:  for 
they  shall  see  God  "  (Matt.  5:8).  In  every  case  it 
is  the  inward  principle  of  action  that  makes  or  un- 
makes the  man. 

Furthermore,  Jesus  treats  reverently  every  in- 
dividual soul.  He  sees  the  essential  goodness  in 
Zacchaeus  the  despised  publican.  He  commends 
the  woman's  deed  of  devotion  in  Bethany,  under- 
standing her  motive.  He  condemns  the  Pharisee 
for  laying  heavy  burdens  on  men's  souls.  He 
counsels  the  disciples  not  to  be  overanxious  for  the 
future,  since  they  are  of  more  value  to  God  than 
many  sparrows.  And,  in  those  words  in  which  he 
lays  down  the  eternal  principle  of  ethical  and  reli- 
gious freedom,  he  commands  the  disciples  to  give 
their  souls  and  wills  into  the  keeping  of  no  external 
authority.  "But  be  not  ye  called  Rabbi;  for  one 
is  your  Master,  even  Christ ;  and  all  are  ye  brethren. 
And  call  no  man  your  father  upon  the  earth :  for  one 
is  your  Father  which  is  in  heaven  "  (Matt.  23 :  8,  9). 
He  asserts  the  supremacy  of  human  needs  over  con- 


72      JESUS   CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

vention  and  institution.  "The  Son  of  Man  is  Lord 
also  of  the  Sabbath"  (Mark  2:28,  etc.). 

But  Jesus  grounds  this  freedom  and  infinite  worth 
of  the  individual  soul  on  its  true  basis  in  the  universal 
and  eternal.  The  disciples  have  one  Father  and  one 
Master.  They  are  to  serve  one  another  even  as  he 
has  served  them,  ''But  he  that  is  greatest  among  you 
shall  be  your  servant"  (Matt.  23:11).  And  the 
supreme  and  inviolable  principle  of  the  ethical  Hfe 
is  an  all-encompassing,  all-forgiving  love.  "But  I 
say  unto  you,  love  your  enemies,"  etc.  (Matt.  5 :  44). 
This  command  arises  from  the  conviction  of  an  in- 
alienable worth  in  every  human  soul.  Hate  does 
violence  to  this  worth,  and  therefore  injures  not 
only  him  against  whom  it  is  directed,  but  him 
from  whom  it  proceeds. 

Furthermore  the  unstinted  care  and  beneficence 
of  the  disciple  is  not  to  be  directed  simply  to  external 
things.  We  are  to  care  for  the  very  souls  or  spirits 
of  our  fellows.  "  But  whoso  shall  offend  one  of  these 
Uttle  ones  which  beUeve  in  me,  it  were  better  for 
him  that  a  mill-stone  were  hanged  about  his  neck, 
and  that  he  were  drowned  in  the  depth  of  the  sea'* 
(Matt.  18:  6,  Mark  9:  42). 

These  are  fundamental  principles  of  the  social  life 
which  we  will  consider  in  the  following  chapter^ 
But  the  objective  ethical  principle  or  end  for  the 
individual  is  not  a  merely  placid  social  Hfe.  Con- 
duct is  not  exhausted  in  making  others  happy,  in 
feeding  and  clothing  men,   and  promoting  social 


THE   CONDUCT    OF   THE    INDIVIDUAL    LIFE        73 

harmony.  Jesus,  who  counsels  forgiveness  of  ene- 
mies, says:  "Think  not  that  I  am  come  to  send 
peace  on  earth.  I  came  not  to  send  peace,  but  a 
sword"  (Matt.  10:34,  and  also  Luke  12:51). 
He  could  denounce  the  Pharisees  in  no  meek  or 
hesitating  words.  He  never  counselled  or  sought  a 
social  peace  and  harmony  won  by  the  sacrifice  of 
the  higher  insights  of  the  individual.  He  never 
would  have  a  living  soul  enslaved  by  convention, 
past  or  present,  or  sanction  any  custom  that  violated 
the  worth  of  the  individual  Hfe. 

Jesus  points  beyond  the  actual  social  life,  as  well 
as  beyond  the  merely  natural  or  worldly  life  of  the 
individual,  to  a  supreme  spiritual  end.  Human 
conduct  is  to  be  directed  toward  attaining  this  end. 
Human  life  is  to  be  transformed  into  a  higher  spir- 
itual life.  The  goal  of  ethical  action  is  a  new 
spiritual  manhood.  "Ye  must  be  bom  again" 
(John  3:7).  "That  which  is  born  of  the  Spirit  is 
spirit"  (John  3 :  6).  "That  ye  may  be  the  children 
of  your  Father  which  is  in  heaven"  (Matt.  5:45). 
"Be  ye  therefore  perfect  even  as  your  Father  which 
is  in  heaven  is  perfect "  (Matt.  5 :  48).  There  is, 
Jesus  teaches,  a  supreme  and  eternal  Hfe  of  which  the 
germ  exists  in  man.  And  man's  destiny  is  no  less 
than  to  bring  to  fruition  this  spiritual  life  within 
himself.  This  spiritual  life  is  that  of  the  Kingdom 
of  Heaven  or  Kingdom  of  God.  This  kingdom  has 
been  founded  and  men  can  enter  it  at  any  time,  and 
are  indeed  constantly  entering  it  now  in  this  earthly 


74      JESUS    CHRIST    AND   CIVILIZATION    OF   TO-DAY 

life.  Jesus'  idea  of  God  as  the  source  and  sustainer 
of  this  spiritual  life  we  shall  consider  later.  But 
we  can  now  outline  the  characteristic  marks  of  this 
life  in  the  human  individual. 

(i)  A  man  begins  to  possess  and  grows  into  the 
true  life  only  in  so  far  as  he  meets  the  tasks  and 
duties,  the  problems  and  opportunities,  of  everyday 
existence  in  the  spirit  of  open-minded  desire  ever  to 
do,  to  know,  and  to  be,  the  better.  The  distinctively 
human  life,  the  unceasing  growth  of  heart  and  mind, 
which  is  man's  prerogative  and  true  destiny,*  is  pos- 
sible only  in  so  far  as  a  man  keeps  his  mind  open  and 
sensitive  to  all  truth,  his  will  humble  and  eager  to  em- 
brace all  good,  his  entire  spirit  free  from  narrow  pride 
and  smug  self-satisfaction.  When  Jesus  says,  "Verily 
I  say  unto  you.  Except  ye  be  converted,  and  become 
as  little  children,  ye  shall  not  enter  into  the  king- 
dom of  heaven"  (Matt.  18:3;  compare  also  Mark 
10: 15,  Luke  18: 17,  Luke  9:  48,  etc.),  and  "SuiBFer 
little  children  to  come  unto  me,  and  forbid  them  not : 
for  of  such  is  the  kingdom  of  God  "  (Luke  18: 16), 
he  does  not  mean  that,  in  order  to  enter  into  this  new 
realm  of  ever-growing  and  yet  eternal  life,  one  must 
have  the  innocence  of  a  child  in  matters  of  conduct 
and  morality,  its  ignorance  in  matters  of  common 
knowledge  or  science.    No !  the  most  charming  and 

*  Compare,  Browning — 

"  Finds  progress  man's  distinctive  mark  alone. 
Not  God's  and  not  the  beasts' ;  God  is,  they  are. 
Man  partly  is  and  wholly  hopes  to  be." 

—  A  Death  in  the  Desert. 


THE   CONDUCT    OF   THE    INDIVIDUAL    LIFE        75 

beautiful  thing  about  a  child's  mind  is  its  eager  and 
zestful  openness  to  new  influences  and  fresh  ideas, 
its  open-mindedness  and  honesty  of  purpose,  its 
teachableness  unhampered  by  any  thought  of 
personal  profit,  by  fear  of  painful  consequences, 
or  dread  of  established  conventions  and  opinions. 
The  childlike  spirit  is  that  of  gcAuineness.  The 
entrance  upon  and  the  pursuit  of  the  true  Ufe  re- 
quires an  open-minded,  humble,  reverent,  and  eager 
desire  for  fuller  truth  and  higher  righteousness. 
This  childlike  spirit  of  candour  and  love  for  truth  be- 
longs to  the  true  saint,  the  scholar,  the  artist,  the  good 
citizen.  In  any  and  every  relation  and  duty  of  life 
the  man  who  lays  his  whole  heart  and  intellect  open 
to  the  leading  of  that  which  is  truer,  better,  more 
beautiful,  more  worthy  than  that  to  which  he  or  the 
social  conventions  of  his  time  and  place  may  have 
yet  attained,  is  moving  along  the  road  to  perfection. 
He  has  already  entered  into  the  life  eternal  of  which 
Jesus  speaks. 

(2)  It  follows  that  a  man's  actions  are  really  good 
only  in  so  far  as  they  are  determined  from  within 
by  motives  which  he  has  weighed,  approved,  and 
affirmed  by  his  own  conscious  will.  This  great 
principle  of  the  inward  and  personal  origin  of  all 
truly  human  or  voluntary  action  is  insisted  upon 
again  and  again  by  Jesus.  ''For  out  of  the  heart 
proceed  evil  thoughts,  murders,  adulteries,  forni- 
cations, thefts,  false  witness,  blasphemies "  (Matt. 
15:19;    compare   also,    Mark    7:21,    Luke   6:45, 


76      JESUS   CHRIST   AND  CIVILIZATION   OF  TO-DAY 

^.^Ltt,  12:34,  35,  etc.)-  Speaking  to  the  Pharisees, 
he  says:  "Now  do  ye  Pharisees  make  clean  the 
outside  of  the  cup  and  the  platter ;  but  your  inward 
part  is  full  of  ravening  and  wickedness "  (Luke 
11:39);  *'for  ye  are  like  unto  whited  sepulchres, 
which  indeed  appear  beautiful  outward,  but  within 
are  full  of  dead  men's  bones,  and  of  all  uncleanness," 
etc.  (Matt.  23:27,  etc.). 

When  Kant,  the  greatest  moral  philosopher  of 
modem  times,  said,  "There  is  nothing  in  the  world, 
or  even  out  of  it,  that  can  be  called  good  without 
qualification,  except  a  good  will, "  ^  he  simply 
expressed  in  a  formula  this  principle  of  the  personal 
inwardness  of  all  right  human  action  which  Jesus 
taught  and  illustrated  by  word  and  deed  as  no  other 
ethical  teacher  among  men  has  done. 

(3)  One  must  not  act  for  praise  or  reward,  but 
simply  for  the  sake  of  the  end  and  the  joy  of  the 
working,  the  joy  of  communion  and  fellowship 
with  the  master- workman.  This  principle  apphes,- 
whether  the  work  be  the  active  rendering  of  help  to 
one's  neighbours,  the  speaking  of  truth,  prayer  to 
God,  or  what  not.  "My  Father  worketh  hitherto 
and  I  work"  (John  5:17).  In  his  model  prayer, 
Jesus  tells  his  disciples  to  ask  in  trust  for  their  daily 
needs  only,  and,  beyond  this,  to  express  their  desire 
that  God's  kingdom  of  righteousness  and  love  may 
come,  their  entire  submission  to  and  cooperation 
with  the  Supreme  and  Righteous  will.     "Thy  king- 

^  Kant,  Metaphysic  of  Morals,  Section  I. 


THE   CONDUCT   OF   THE   INDIVIDUAL   LIFE        77 

dom  come,  thy  will  be  done  "  (Matt.  6 :  lo,  Luke 
11:2).  Jesus  does  not  say  that  service  of  the  high- 
est is  without  its  reward.  He  teaches  most  emphati- 
cally that  the  universe  is  so  ordered  that  the  good 
will  triumph  and  the  evil  be  annihilated.  He 
finds  throughout  the  universe  a  law  of  compensation 
or  retribution.  He  teaches  that  the  spirits  of  men 
who  have  laboured  faithfully,  humbly,  and  gladly 
shall  enter  into  the  great  reward.*  But  he  insists 
that  men's  motives  shall  be  pure  and  disinterested, 
that  they  shall  labour  without  stint  or  envy,  joy- 
ously and  ungrudgingly,  for  the  progress  of  righteous- 
ness, peace,  and  happiness  among  men. 

In  the  great  parable  of  the  Labourers  in  the 
Vineyard,^  under  the  guise  of  a  like  reward  for  all 
^ho  have  laboured,  whether  for  a  short  or  a  long 
period,  he  calls  attention,  on  the  one  hand,  to  the 
complication  of  circumstances  and  of  personal 
conditions  which  prevent  some  men  from  awaken- 
ing to  a  sense  of  their  true  destiny  until  the  pos- 
sibility of  entering  upon  the  right  life  is  almost  gone, 
while  others  have  the  great  privilege  of  labouring 
in  the  realm  of  righteousness  and  peace  from  the 
very  outset  of  life,  having  wasted  no  energies  and 
lost  no  time  in  the  pursuit  of  mere  material  goods 
and  pleasures  or  in  the  indulgence  of  the  evil  pas- 
sions of  greed  and  hate ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  he 
teaches  that  the  rewards  of  those  who  labour  for  the 

^  Compare  Matt.  5 :  12,  lo :  41  £f. ;  Mark  10 :  29, 30 ;  Luke  6: '23  S. ; 
and  many  passages  in  John.  'Matt.  20: 1-16. 


78     JESUS   CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

highest,  in  the  spirit  of  fidelity  and  love,  are  im- 
measurable. The  principles  of  contract  labour  in 
the  market-place  of  this  world  have  no  application 
to  the  motives  and  rewards  of  the  spiritual  life;  i.e. 
to  the  life  of  service  and  of  growth  in  the  kingdom 
of  the  good. 

For  here  the  rewards  are  infinite  and  immeasur- 
able. They  can  be  appraised  in  terms  of  no  earthly 
or  monetary  standard,  since  the  reward  is  simply 
the  unfolding  of  the  motive  of  all  true  labour  and 
service;  viz.  the  joy  of  the  working,  the  joy  of 
growing  in  life  by  labour  for  truth  and  justice,  for 
love  and  peace.  The  infinite  reward  is  the  expan- 
sion of  this  joy  of  honest  and  devoted  work  into  a 
consciousness  of  communion  and  fellowship  with  the 
Highest.  This  principle  has  been  well-expressed 
by  Kipling:  — 

"  And  no  one  shall  work  for  money,  and  no  one  shall  work 

for  fame, 
But  each  for  the  joy  of  the   working,  and  each,  in  his 

separate  star, 
Shall  draw  the  Thing  as  he  sees  It  for  the  God  of  Things 

as  They  Are."  —  The  Seven  Seas,  V Envoi. 

This  is  the  spirit  of  true  scholar,  artist,  and  poet, 
no  less  than  of  what  is  technically  called  the  devotee. 
Each  in  his  several  vocation  is  true  labourer  and 
hence  true  saint.  And  there  is  no  worldly  and  con- 
ventional standard  or  instrument  by  which  true 
service  may  be  accurately  measured  or  unfailingly 
detected. 


THE    CONDUCT   OF   THE    INDIVIDUAL   LIFE        79 

'  There  are  flashes  struck  from  midnight,  there  are  fire- 
flames  noon  days  kindle, 

Whereby  piied-up  honours  perish,  whereby  swollen  am- 
bitions dwindle ; 

While  just  this  or  that  poor  impulse,  which  for  once  had 
play  unstifled 

Seems  the  sole  work  of  a  lifetime  that  away  the  rest  have 
trifled."  —  Browning,  Cristina. 

The  publican  and  harlot  enter  the  kingdom 
before  the  respectable  and  highly  connected  Phari- 
see. Irreproachable  reputation  and  high  social 
standing  may  accompany  spiritual  death. 

(4)  An  individual  in  whom  this  spiritual  principle 
is  dominant  will  not  allow  the  inward  integrity, 
freedom,  and  peace  of  his  personaHty  to  be  de- 
stroyed by  any  fear  of  external  fortune  or  by  social 
disapproval  of  those  who  Hve  and  judge  by  purely 
traditional  and  customary  standards.  He  will  not 
spend  his  energies  in  headlong  pursuit  of  gain  or 
pleasure  or  of  the  approval  and  commendation  of 
society's  arbiters. 

He  will  keep  his  poise  at  the  centre  of  the  inner  Hfe, 
which  is  preeminently  a  feeling  for  the  real  and 
true,  inciting  to  activity  a  strong  will.  He  will 
preserve  at  all  hazards  the  spiritual  freedom  and 
integrity  of  thought  which  belongs  to  him  as  a 
rational  personality.  He  will  know,  and  live  by 
the  knowledge,  that  it  shall  profit  a  man  nothing 
if  he  gain  the  whole  world  and  lose  his  own  soul. 
He  will  not  fear  them  which  have  power  to  kill  the 
body.    He  will  not  fear  them  that  have  power  to 


8o      JESUS   CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

exclude  a  man  from  some  established  organization  or 
institution,  whether  this  be  a  so-called  select  social 
''set,"  a  club,  a  church,  or  a  trades  union.  He  will 
not  fear  them  that  have  power  to  rob  a  man  of  his  just 
deserts  in  business  or  labour  or  even  of  his  popularity 
or  office.  But  he  will  fear  them  that  have  power 
to  destroy  the  soul,^  —  the  spirits  that  flourish  on 
and  live  by  sycophancy  and  lying  and  cheating,  by 
base  compromise  and  ignoble  flattery;  by  an  in- 
vertebrate conformity  to  that  in  business  and  poHtics, 
in  social  life  and  church,  which  has  no  excuse  for 
existence  except  that  it  does  exist  and  exerts  its 
baleful  and  deadening  influence  to  retard  the 
progress  of  social  justice,  of  mental  independence, 
and  of  personal  virtue.  He  will  fear,  above  all, 
those  spirits  and  tendencies,  ever  present  in  civiliza- 
tion, which  have  power  to  throw  a  man's  life  into  the 
hell  of  a  violated  self-respect,  a  vanished  love  for 
truth,  an  individual  freedom  lost  through  coward- 
ice, a  soul  deadened  by  mere  conformity  for  the  sake 
of  ease  and  comfort,  position,  popularity,  and  wealth. 
(5)  A  man  who  follows  the  principles  of  Jesus 
Christ  will  strive  to  make  the  best  use  of  his  own 
powers,  both  because  of  their  inherent  worth  as 
attributes  of  a  personal  spirit,  and  because  of  their 
value  in  furthering  the  welfare  of  other  men.     He 

^  The  disciples  were  warned  to  fear  the  spirit  of  compromise, 
of  dishonest  and  disloyal  regard  for  their  own  comfort,  in  the 
critical  days  when  the  Master  faced  the  implacable  hate  of  Jewish 
ecclesiastics. 


THE   CONDUCT   OF  THE   INDIVIDUAL   LIFE       8l 

will  develop  his  own  personal  capacities  to  the  ut- 
most and  ever  use  them  in  the  service  of  justice, 
truth,  and  love.  The  necessity  of  constant  alertness — 
of  activity,  of  the  fullest  use  of  one's  capacities  and 
opportunities,  is  insisted  upon  again  and  again  by 
Jesus,  but  more  especially  in  the  parables  of  the 
Unjust  Steward  ^  and  of  the  Talents.^  The  man  to 
whom  one  talent  is  given  is  deprived  thereof  because 
he  has  made  no  use  of  it. 

(6)  The  man  who  accepts  Jesus'  principles  of 
life  will  not  judge  other  men's  achievements  or 
failures  by  the  standards  of  his  own  Hfe.  He  will  be 
humbly  sensible  of  the  infinite  complexity  of  human 
life,  of  the  tangled  threads  of  destiny  in  which  man 
is  enmeshed;  threads  interwoven  of  the  com- 
plexity of  external  conditions  in  relation  to  the  ever- 
varying  strength  and  duration  of  the  fundamental 
impulses  of  human  nature  from  man  to  man.  "Judge 
not,  that  ye  be  not  judged"  (Matt.  7:1).  "Why 
beholdest  thou  the  mote  that  is  in  thy  brother's 
eye,  but  considerest  not  the  beam  that  is  in  thine 
own  eye?"  (Matt.  7:3).  "For  unto  whomsoever 
much  is  given,  of  him  shall  much  be  required" 
(Luke  12:48).  "Many  shall  come  from  the  east 
and  the  west,  and  shall  sit  down  with  Abraham, 
and  Isaac,  and  Jacob,  in  the  kingdom  of  heaven" 
(Matt.  8:11;  compare  Luke  13 :  25-30). 

Such  a  man  will  strive  not  to  forget  in  his  attitude 

toward  his  fellows  the  Divine   Love   that  forgives 

^Luke  16: 1-^8.        'Matt.  25: 15-30;  Luke  19: 12-26. 
G 


82       JESUS   CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

and  embraces  in  its  beneficence  even  the  most 
errant  and  sinful  son  of  man.  He  will  endeavour  to 
reproduce  in  his  own  heart  that  love  that  maketh  its 
sun  to  rise  on  the  evil  and  on  the  good,  and  sendeth 
rain  on  the  just  and  on  the  unjust  (Matt.  5  :  45). 

(7)  There  will  be  and  grow  in  such  a  man  an  in- 
tegrity or  wholeness  of  moral  life,  since  he  vtIU 
ever  seek  and  serve  the  real,  and  will  ever  be  the 
enemy  of  pretence  and  sham.  No  firm  and  lasting 
integrity  and  harmony  of  living  is  possible  except  in 
the  service  of  those  ideal  values  of  conscious  living 
which  in  abstract  terms  are  called  truth  in  thought, 
reality  in  deed,  justice  in  the  mutual  relations  of  men, 
fellowship  or  love  and  friendship  in  the  common 
relationships;  and  which,  in  the  concrete  forms  in 
which  they  may  be  embodied  and  experienced  by 
the  individual,  constitute  the  real  worth  of  living, 
the  actual  wealth  and  harmony  of  personal  being. 

(8)  Ever  looking  for  and  striving  to  promote  in 
others  the  same  rational,  free,  and  spiritual  human- 
ity that  he  seeks  to  develop  in  himself,  such  a  man 
will  affirm  in  every  ethical  deed  the  supreme  authority 
and  ultimate  reality  of  this  ideal  humanity,  which 
constantly  grows  in  the  world  through  the  individual's 
choice  of  truth,  of  justice,  of  forgiveness,  of  practical 
love,  of  independence  of  soul  and  integrity  of  mind. 

Without  faith  in  the  possibility  of  a  new  humanity, 
consisting  in  a  Hving  fellowship  of  free  and  rational 
persons  united,  not  by  external  constraint,  but  by  the 
bond  of  mutual  reverence  and  regard,  and  each  direct- 


THE   CONDUCT   OF   THE    INDIVIDUAL   LIFE        83 

ing  his  actions  without  desire  for  worldly  profit  or 
applause,  in  order  that  by  his  deeds  the  higher  man- 
hood may  find  expression  in  his  own  life  and  in  the 
lives  of  others,  life  is  but  a  miserable  thing,  the 
ephemeral  illumination  by  consciousness  and  thought 
of  a  lump  of  clay  warmed  by  the  instincts  of  an 
animal,  which  in  turn  are  fanned  into  a  consuming 
flame  of  desire,  by  the  very  power  of  thought. 
Thought  which  is  employed  only  to  enhance  and  to 
serve  brute  desire,  thus  degraded  from  its  proper 
function  breeds  either  despair  and  rage  at  the 
failure  of  Ufe  to  satisfy  itself  or  a  hollow  satiety. 

Jesus  teaches  emphatically  that  this  new  humanity 
can  come  to  birth  in  a  man  only  if  he  has  the  faith  to 
affirm  it.  Spiritual  fife  begins  in  unstable  equilib- 
rium. The  spirit  of  man  hovers,  in  its  critical 
moments,  on  the  razor-edge  of  being  which  divides 
the  realm  of  moral  decay,  of  spiritual  death  and  lost 
individuahty,  from  the  realm  of  moral  progress  and 
life  eternal.  The  latter  is  the  realm  of  those  who 
manfully  hold  and  reaffirm  a  great  faith  in  the  value 
of  the  spirit,  and  so  find  personality  in  the  service 
of  a  spiritual  humanity  which  is  by  their  acts  trans- 
formed from  vision  into  reality,  from  ideal  into  fact. 
Very  often  the  fine  which  divides  dishonest  compro- 
mise from  honesty  in  deed  or  utterance  or  thought,  or 
self-indulgence  from  self-sacrifice,  seems  so  wavering 
and  faint  that  only  in  the  privacy  of  a  soul  sternly  alive 
to  spiritual  issues  can  this  line  be  discerned  and  kept. 

In  the  very  act  of  affirming  by  deed  his  faith  in 


84      JESUS    CHRIST    AND    CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

the  new  humanity,  man  recreates  in  himself,  with 
new  power  and  greater  actuahty,  that  new  human- 
ity. He  is  reborn  into  a  realm  which  is  not  seen  or 
handled  by  the  outer  senses,  which  cannot  be 
weighed  or  measured,  and  which,  hence,  never  is 
in  a  physical  sense ;  but  which  becomes,  for  one  who 
affirms  and  so  experiences  it,  an  ever  living  and  grow- 
ing actuality,  at  once  the  dynamic  source  and  goal  of 
conscious  being. 

Hence  the  severe  tests  that  Jesus  makes  in  order 
that  men's  wills  may  be  awakened  to  the  affirmation 
of  this  spiritual  realm  which  they  cannot  apprehend 
or  enter  without  such  affirmation.  When  he  finds 
that  interest  in  family,  wealth,  or  occupation 
obscures  the  recognition  of  the  supreme  importance 
of  personal  choice  of  the  higher  life,  he  lays  down 
conditions  that  bring  to  a  head  the  spiritual  crisis 
in  his  hearers  through  which  alone  there  can  be 
bom  in  them  the  full  consciousness  of  their  own 
spiritual  individuahty,  of  the  sacredness  and  su- 
preme worth  of  the  soul.  "Let  the  dead  bury  their 
dead"  (Matt.  8:  22).  "Go  and  sell  that  thou  hast, 
.  .  .  and  come  and  follow  me"  (Matt.  19:21, 
Mark  10:  21).  We  must  not  extract  laws  or  rules 
for  every  life  from  these  utterances.  They  are 
directed  toward  specific  cases.  It  is  the  principle 
and  not  a  Hteral  appKcation  of  an  occasional  utter- 
ance that  shines  through  them.^    The  same  principle 

^  Remember  that  these  words  were  addressed  to  his  immediate 
disciples  at  the  great  turning-point  in  their  Master's  life.    There 


THE    CONDUCT    OF   THE    INDIVIDUAL    LIFE       85 

is  taught  in  the  parable  of  the  Wedding  Supper. 
The  bidden  guests  are  unready  because  they  are 
absorbed  in  various  side-issues.  It  is  another 
aspect  of  the  same  principle  that  Jesus  demands 
faith.  His  insistence  upon  faith  as  a  prerequi- 
site to  being  healed  or  otherwise  helped,  as 
well  as  to  hearing  aright  and  understanding  his 
message,  flows  from  the  full  consciousness,  on  his 
part,  that,  in  the  critical  moments  of  moral  and 
spiritual  development,  the  direction  that  a  man's 
life  shall  take  and,  indeed,  his  very  power  of  further 
appreciation  and  understanding  of  spiritual  princi- 
ples, depend  on  the  outgoing  affirmation  of  will  by 
which  there  is  kindled  in  him  the  feeling  of  the 
supreme  value  of  these  intangible  spiritual  princi- 
ples which  he  embraces;  and  of  their  transcendent 
authority  in  contrast  with  the  brute  facts  of  the 
physical  world  and  with  the  inert  conventions  of 

can  be  no  compromise  between  him  and  the  rulers  of  the  Jewish 
church.  He  must  suffer  many  things  and  be  put  to  death. 
They,  the  disciples,  must  now  make  the  great  choice.  Shall  they 
elect  persecution,  distress  of  mind,  suffering,  perhaps  death,  in 
loyalty  to  the  truth  enshrined  in  the  Master's  person  and  life,  or 
shall  they  think  of  wives  and  families,  of  friends  and  comfort,  and 
be  cowardly  recreant  to  the  light  that  has  shone  into  their  souls? 
To  every  mature  man,  perhaps,  comes  sooner  or  later  the  ne- 
cessity of  the  great  choice.  Shall  the  business  man  be  honest 
and  lose  money  or  dishonest  and  make  money  ?  Shall  the  artisan 
do  badly  a  piece  of  important  work  that  cannot  be  seen  ?  Shall 
statesman,  scholar,  or  preacher  face  unpopularity  or  personal  loss 
of  position,  power,  or  reward  to  stand  by  a  principle  ?  The  hour 
surely  strikes  when  we  must  forsake  all  and  follow  Him  or  lose 
our  spiritual  integrity. 


86      JESUS   CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

worldly  society  with  its  traffickings,  its  rivalries  and 
hatreds. 

In  the  matter  of  ethical  development  in  the 
individual  there  is,  first,  the  nascent  will  to  affirm 
that  which  is  seen,  dimly  it  may  be,  to  be  higher; 
then  the  deed ;  and,  lastly,  the  clear  insight  or  full 
experience  of  that  moral  harmony  which  bursts  into 
flower  only  through  the  medium  of  antecedent 
choice  and  deed.  In  the  moral  life  knowledge 
requires  direct  personal  experience  and  experience 
requires  the  experimental  proof  of  willing.  By  the 
nature  of  the  case  the  unseen  realm  of  spiritual  val- 
ues of  ideal  personal  and  social  Hfe  can  be  known 
only  by  him  who  wills  these  values.  **If  any  man 
will  do  his  will,  he  shall  know  of  the  doctrine  " 
(John  7:17).  This  saying  penetrates  to  the  heart 
of  the  matter. 

The  new  birth  is  the  coming  to  personal  and  vital 
experience  of  the  conviction  of  the  inherent  worth  and 
the  supreme  reality  and  authority  of  a  rational,  free, 
self-governing  humanity,  which  is  present  in  germ 
and  seeking  actualization  in  every  individual  son  of 
man;  and  which  has  its  roots  in  a  Divine  and 
Transcendent  Life.  Hence  this  new  experience  of 
the  possibiUties  of  manhood  which  is  a  new  birth, 
i.e.  the  birth  into  consciousness  of  one's  conviction 
of  a  supremely  worthful  destiny  as  member  of  a 
transcendent  order  of  Hfe,  while  it  involves  a  personal 
deed,  likewise  involves  the  feeling  of  a  spiritual  gift 
or  grace  which  comes  from  beyond  the  individual's 


THE    CONDUCT   OF   THE    INDIVIDUAL    LIFE        87 

life.  In  the  critical  deed  of  faith  in  the  new  human- 
ity the  individual's  Hfe  is  enlarged  by  the  vision  and 
contact  of  a  Universal  Life.  His  own  deed  brings 
the  infinite  reward  of  fellowship  with  a  life  that 
lifts  his  narrow  and  transient  being  into  the  atmos- 
phere of  the  eternal. 

In  the  world  of  western  civilization  to-day, 
freedom  of  action  for  the  individual  is  generally 
recognized  to  be  the  indispensable  condition  for  the 
development  of  personality.  The  modern  man  has 
gained  the  insight  that  a  genuine  morality  is  above  all 
else  a  quality  of  the  inner  personal  life,  and  that, 
where  violence  is  done  to  the  integrity  of  the  in- 
dividual will,  there  can  be  no  real  ethical  life.  But, 
on  the  other  hand,  is  it  not  true  that  freedom  of 
action  without  the  willing  service  of  universal  princi- 
ples of  justice  and  truth  degenerates  into  mere 
sensuous  license  and  egoistic  caprice?  Can  there 
be  any  deep  inwardness,  any  abiding  personal  life, 
where  thought  and  action  are  not  directed  beyond 
the  mere  externals  of  culture,  —  beyond  the  acquisi- 
tion of  power  and  wealth,  of  social  renown  and  means 
of  enjoyment,  and  where  the  soul  is  absorbed  in  the 
mere  machinery  of  life?  What  real  and  lasting 
worth  is  there  in  the  individual  Hfe  which  seeks  to  stay 
itself  on  external  acquisitions  or  outward  recognition, 
and  which  tries  to  satisfy  itself  merely  with  doing 
things  that  win  popular  approval,  or  that  impress 
others  with  their  bigness  and  ghtter,  or  that  kill  time  1  \ 
with  pleasures  that  leave  the  spirit  hungry,  discoiK^ 


88      JESUS    CHRIST   AND    CIVILIZATION    OF   TO-DAY 

tented,  and  restless,  without  inward  poise  or  unity  of 
aim?    Surely  there  is  need  to-day  of  integrity  and 
unity  in  life  and  action,  need  of  an  abiding  and  direct- 
ing central  principle  of  action,  need  of  the  support  and 
guidance  of  the  imperfect  and  growing  ethical  and 
personal  life  by  faith  in  and  contact  with  a  supreme 
spiritual  Hfe  which  the  individual  may  make  his 
own  if  he  will.    This  central  and  abiding,  unifying 
tod   sustaining,   Hfe-principle,    Jesus   offers  in   his 
•teaching  concerning  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven.     En- 
jtrance  into  this  kingdom  is  an  inward  attitude,  an 
I  ethical  experience,  a  point  of  view  and  of  departure 
ito  be  appropriated  by  personal  deed.     The  message 
of  Jesus  to  the  individual  is  twofold,  —  a  revelation 
:  of  the  possibility  of  inward  unity,  stabiHty,  inde- 
1  pendence,   and  peace  in  the  midst  of  distracting 
•  and  contradictory  calls  from  the  mere  outer  show  of 
\  things  in  society  and  nature,  in  state  and   church, 
land  a  summons  to  the  individual  to  make  these 
i  spiritual  realities  his  own  by  the  personal  deeds  of 
\a  free  spirit,  able  to  win  that  higher  life  amidst  the 
iponfusion  and  conflicts  of  the  existing  order  of  human 
$ociety. 

\ 
\ 

\ 

\ 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  CONDUCT  OF  THE  SOCIAL  LIFE 

In  the  forefront  of  the  problems  of  contemporary 
civiHzation  stand  those  problems  that  are  grouped 
together  under  the  name  of  social  questions.  Such 
are,  —  the  ever  more  insistent  questions  of  the  right 
relations  of  labour  and  capital,  of  the  rights  and 
wrongs  of  labor  organizations,  of  the  right  of  great 
producing  and  distributing  combinations  to  control 
the  price  of  commodities  of  common  use  and  need, 
of  the  state's  relation  to  labour  union  and  trust,  of  the 
unemployed,  of  the  herding  of  masses  into  insanitary 
and  crowded  dwellings,  of  the  minimum  hours  of 
labour  and  the  living  wage,  etc. ;  in  short,  the  prob- 
lems of  the  right  distribution  of  opportunity  and 
means  of  maintenance,  of  welfare  and  enjoyment 
for  the  average  man.  Now,  modem  science  has 
taught  us  that  the  nature  of  the  environment,  both 
physical  and  social  or  psychical,  is  a  tremendously 
important  factor  not  only  in  its  bearing  on  the  health 
and  welfare  of  the  adult,  but,  still  more,  on  the 
development  of  the  new  generation.  Hence  the 
question  of  providing  healthier,  cleaner,  and  morally 
better  environments  for  the  development  of  the  citi- 
zens becomes  one  of  surpassing  importance  to  demo- 

89 


90      JESUS    CHRIST    AND   CIVILIZATION    OF    TO-DAY 

cratic  society.  The  democratic  state  is  forced,  in  the 
interest  of  its  own  welfare,  to  take  account  of  these 
problems. 

The  science  of  biology  has  cast  a  striking  light  on 
the  evolution  of  human  society,  by  its  emphasis  on  the 
brute  struggle  for  existence,  which  goes  on  amongst 
all  living  beings  and  preeminently  in  a  modem 
society  of  the  industrial  type.  And  biology  and 
psychology  have  united  to  teach  us  the  paramount 
importance  of  the  environment  in  determining  the 
efficiency  of  the  individual's  powers  and  weapons  in 
this  struggle  and  in  determining  to  what  extent  the 
individual's  demand  for  welfare  and  happiness  shall 
be  honoured  by  the  actual  conditions  of  existence. 

Then,  too,  these  demands  of  the  individual  for  life 
and  well-being  have  themselves  increased  with  the 
general  growth  of  enhghtenment.  It  has  become  a 
truism  that  the  increase  in  the  number  and  intensity 
of  wants  or  desires  is  a  mark  of  civilization.  The 
savage  has  few  wants.  The  child  of  twentieth- 
century  civilization  is  marked  at  once  by  a  greater 
sensitiveness  to  environment,  a  keener  capacity  to 
enjoy  and  suffer,  and  a  multiplication  of  psychical 
needs  or  desires  —  i.e.  of  needs  that  are  such  be- 
cause they  have  been  awakened  through  education 
and  social  contact  and  are  keenly  jelt.  Further- 
more, the  daily  dissemination  of  information  enables 
the  poor  labourer  to  learn  what  his  rich  fellow- 
citizens  are  doing  and  enjoying,  how  they  are  sat- 
isfying their   needs,  etc.     And    so  his  desires  and 


THE   CONDUCT   OF   THE   SOCIAL   LIFE  gi 

demands  tend  to  multiply  themselves  and  to  breed 
unrest  and  discontent.  His  standard  of  living,  of 
comfort,  of  recreation  rises  rapidly  toMrard  the 
plane  of  luxury.  Out  of  all  these  complex  factors 
of  our  civilization  grovi^s  apace  and  with  tremendous 
urgency  the  social  problem  —  the  problem  of  a  new 
social  order  which  shall  bring  a  higher  measure  of 
justice,  welfare,  and  peace  to  all. 

Now  the  social  problem  concerns  us  here  only  in 
its  ethical  aspects.  And  we  may  recognize  at  once 
that  mere  increase  of  desires  and  of  demands,  such 
as  we  have  just  noted,  has  no  necessary  ethical 
quahty  and  that  there  may  be  no  question  of  funda- 
mental justice  involved  in  many  of  these  demands 
in  so  far  as  they  are  demands  for  superfluities  and 
injurious  luxuries.  In  so  far  as  civihzation  tends  to 
the  rapid  multiplication  of  wants  and  desires,  with- 
out the  corresponding  means  for  their  satisfaction, 
civilization  is  unethical  in  tendency  and  is  building 
on  a  basis  both  unreasonable  and  dangerously  in- 
secure. But,  on  the  other  hand,  there  must  be  a 
minimum  of  recreation  and  leisure  as  well  as  of  bodily 
food,  proper  housing,  and  mental  training  which  are 
essential  to  the  welfare  of  the  normal  or  average 
person.  And  the  possession  of  these  minima  seems 
to  be  an  ethical  right  which  it  is  the  preeminent  obli- 
gation of  society  to  make  possible.  This  question 
leads  us  directly  into  the  heart  of  the  moral  aspect 
of  social  problems. 

Amongst  the  conditions  of  modem  industrial  life 


92      JESUS    CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION    OF   TO-DAY 

that  are  directly  unethical,  ix,  that  militate  imme- 
diately against  the  mental  and  moral  welfare  of  the 
individual,  those  conditions  which  interfere  with  the 
home  and  family  life  occupy  a  primary  position. 
The  herding  together  of  all  ages  and  both  sexes  in 
crowded  tenements,  the  necessity  of  the  mother's 
leaving  her  children  in  order  to  work  for  their 
bread,  child  labour,  must  all  retard  the  growth 
of  affections  and  activity  in  the  proper  channels  as 
well  as  produce  physical  deterioration.  The  con- 
ditions of  work  amongst  girls  in  shops  and  factories 
often  wear  them  out  physically  or  drive  them  toward 
temptations  that  always  stand  in  their  way. 

Another  factor  in  industrial  life  which  makes 
against  the  highest  welfare  of  the  individual  is  the 
divorce  between  the  worker  and  his  work, — the 
absence  of  any  bond  of  interest  or  delight  between 
the  worker  and  the  routine  labour  of  his  vocation, 
and  also  of  any  bond  of  sympathy  or  common  under- 
standing and  interest  between  employer  and  employed. 
The  "cash  nexus"  becomes  the  chief  social  principle. 
This  situation  exists  not  only  in  manual  labour, 
whether  skilled  or  unskilled,  but  even  where  the  work 
is  preeminently  what  we  call  brainwork.  The  ma- 
chinery of  modem  life  is  so  vast  and  complicated 
that  the  individual  worker  is  in  danger  of  becoming 
a  mere  cog  in  a  system ;  the  human  bond  is  ignored 
and  men  are  treated  as  but  parts  or  tools  of  the 
industrial  system.  Now,  physical  machinery  and 
complex  business  organization  are  both  inevitable 


THE   CONDUCT   OF   THE   SOCIAL   LIFE  93 

conditions  of  our  industrial  and  commercial  activity. 
And  the  only  remedies  for  the  above  evil  conditions 
are,  on  the  one  hand,  the  development  of  a  mutual 
human  interest  and  sympathy  so  far  as  possible; 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  especially  in  the  more  exact- 
ing forms  of  occupation,  a  compensation  for  deaden- 
ing routine  in  a  moderate  leisure  and  the  opportunity 
for  refined  enjoyments. 

In  so  far  as  the  growth  and  activity  of  man,  in 
mind  as  well  as  in  body,  is  dependent  on  an  environ- 
ment which  at  least  must  not  crush  out,  poison, 
or  unduly  repress  his  mental  powers  and  higher 
feelings,  thus  far  does  the  opportunity  which  the 
industrial  situation  gives  an  adult  man  or  a  growing 
child  to  have  nourishing  food,  healthy  surroundings, 
good  air,  and  some  means  of  recreation,  constitute 
the  ethical  aspect  of  industrial  activity.  Further- 
more, man  is  by  nature  social.  The  healthy  and 
harmonious  development  and  functioning  of  the 
human  personality  is  impossible  without  communion 
with  other  selves.  In  so  far  as  by  the  industrial 
conditions  of  his  Hfe  a  man  is  cut  off  from  family 
life,  from  social  companionship  and  recreation  of 
an  honest,  temperate,  and  refining  character,  and, 
in  the  years  when  he  is  plastic  to  external  influences, 
is  not  in  any  way  brought  in  contact  with  uplifting 
and  enhghtening  personalities,  thus  far  the  condi- 
tions of  his  life  are  unethical. 

.  The  above  passages  have  been  written  to  indicate 
briefly  the  ethical  bearings  of  social  problems,  and 


94      JESUS   CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

these  may  be  summed  up  in  a  few  words.  A  rightly 
organized  human  society  is  the  normally  indispen- 
sable condition  for  the  realization  of  the  highest 
individual  life,  and  in  the  previous  chapter  we  saw 
that  all  inherent  worth  centres  finally  in  that  which 
alone  on  earth  has  infinite  worth, — the  individual 
personahty.  This  is  the  essential  teaching  of  Jesus 
on  the  social  question. 

Hence  the  organization  of  society  and  its  various 
institutions  are  not  ends-in-themselves.  They  are 
means  to  the  realization  of  the  higher  personal  life 
in  individuals.  The  principles  which  should  de- 
termine our  valuation  of  any  existing  social  institu- 
tions and  guide  our  efforts  toward  reform  are  these : 
I.  Every  man  has  an  essential  dignity  and  worth 
which  may  indeed  be  hidden  and  potential  but  is 
none  the  less  real.  2.  The  higher  or  ethical  and 
spiritual  Hfe  of  man  is  social.  Personality  requires 
for  its  growth  and  healthy  functioning  communion 
with  others,  mutual  intercourse,  and  service.  The 
social  institutions  —  family,  community,  church, 
and  nation  —  are  instruments  or  means  of  personal 
development  and  activity,  and  thence,  so  far,  have 
an  ethical  character.  The  meaning  and  value  of 
society  is  expressed  in  its  individual  members.  The 
spiritual  individual  is  at  once,  as  potential  spirit, 
the  point  of  departure  for  social  activity  and  reform 
and,  as  actual  spirit,  the  point  of  return,  the  living 
centre  or  core  of  social  life.  The  final  touchstone 
of  a  civilization's  value  is  the  men  it  produces. 


THE    CONDUCT    OF   THE   SOCIAL    LIFE  95 

And  these,  I  take  it,  are  the  principles  of  Jesus' 
social  teaching.  He  lays  down  no  political  or  eco- 
nomic programme.  He  does  not  even  formulate 
a  constitution  for  his  own  society.  He  institutes  a 
free  and  plastic  fellowship.  He  does  not  sketch 
out  an  ecclesiastical  polity.  The  time  was  not  pro- 
pitious for  these  things.  Jesus  does  not  give  the 
details  for  an  ideal  society  such  as  Plato's  State 
or  More's  Utopia.  He  recognized  that  the  constitu- 
tion and  organization  of  societies,  political,  ethical, 
and  ecclesiastical,  must  vary  from  time  to  time,  must 
depend  on  changing  circumstances,  and  that  the 
organization  of  industry  must  be  subject  to  constant 
mutations.  "Heaven  and  earth  shall  pass  away" 
(Matt.  24:  35,  Mark  13 :  31,  Luke  21 :  33).  There- 
fore he  refuses  to  entangle  himself  and  his  teaching 
in  the  judicial  and  poHtical  affairs  of  his  own  time. 
*'Who  made  me  a  judge  or  a  divider  over  you?" 
(Luke  12:  14.)  "Render  therefore  unto  Caesar 
the  things  which  are  Caesar's;  and  unto  God  the 
things  which  are  God's"  (Matt.  22:  21,  etc.).  The 
only  social  institution  concerning  which  he  gave  any 
definite  prescription  was  marriage,  and  it  is  not  clear 
that  he  meant  his  utterances  on  this  point  to  have  the 
force  of  legislation.  He  seems  rather  to  have  simply 
announced  and  illustrated  an  ideal,  which  involved  the 
recognition  of  the  intrinsic  worth  of  womanhood,  and 
obedience  to  which  would  make  marriage  the  union  of 
two  moral  equals  and  an  instrument  for  the  growth  of 
ethical  personality.     Compare  Matt.  19:  4-1 1. 


96      JESUS   CHRIST   AND    CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

Now,  if  we  consider  the  situation  in  which  Jesus 
found  himself,  it  will  become  clear  why  he  refrained 
from  all  specific  legislation  and  institutional  organiza- 
tion, while  laying  the  greatest  stress  on  the  social 
aspects  of  life  and  the  spiritual  significance  of  com- 
mon ideals  and  institutions.  Judaea  was  a  province 
of  Rome  with  autonomy  in  matters  ecclesiastical. 
But  the  intensely  theocratic  nationahsm  of  the  stricter 
members  of  the  Judaic  church  —  the  scribes  and 
Pharisees  —  and  the  feeding  of  this  religious  national- 
ism on  the  traditions  of  the  past,  on  the  glories  of 
the  Davidic  kingdom,  and  on  the  prophetic  ideals 
of  a  new  kingdom  of  righteousness  and  peace,  with 
its  centre  in  Jerusalem,  with  its  intensely  and  thor- 
oughly Jewish  character,  and  with  its  Messianic 
head  of  Davidic  lineage  —  all  these  things  gave  the 
Messianic  ideals  and  hopes  and  longings  of  the  lead- 
ers of  Judaism  in  the  time  of  Jesus  an  intensely  and 
even  fanatically  political  character.  Religion,  morals, 
and  state  were  in  their  ideal  inextricably  bound  up 
together,  and  all  had  a  deeply  Judaistic  tinge.  The 
Messianic  kingdom  was  conceived  in  terms  of  a 
fanatical  nationalism.  Therefore,  it  became  neces- 
sary for  Jesus  sharply  to  define  and  separate  the 
social  order  or  spiritual  fellowship,  which  he  sought 
to  inaugurate,  from  this  worldly  ecclesiastical- 
political  ideal  of  the  representatives  of  orthodox 
Judaism.  Hence  his  kingdom  has  little  in  common 
with  the  expected  Messianic  kingdom  of  scribes 
and  Pharisees  but  the  name.     It  was  not  long  after 


THE   CONDUCT   OF   THE   SOCIAL   LIFE  97 

his  own  day  that  the  advent  of  a  supposed  Messiah  * 
produced  a  political  revolt  and  led  to  conflict  with 
the  Roman  authorities  with  great  bloodshed.  The 
pohtical  Messianic  ideal  went  out  in  flame  and  blood. 
Jesus,  therefore,  was  exceedingly  careful  not  to  jeop- 
ardize his  own  work  and  not  to  have  his  kingdom 
warped  from  its  spiritual  and  ethical  basis,  confused 
with  an  ecclesiastical-poHtical  order,  and  thereby 
entangled  with  the  politics  of  the  Roman  Empire. 

He  seems  to  have  hoped,  during  the  earHer  period 
of  his  pubHc  career,  that  his  ethical  and  spiritual 
conception  of  the  kingdom  would  be  taken  up  into 
and  would  leaven  and  transform  the  Jewish  church. 
When  he  speaks  of  the  immediate  presence  of  the 
kingdom,  of  its  leavening  character,  of  its  rapid 
growth,  when  he  compares  it  to  the  grain  of  mustard 
seed  which  grows  into  a  great  tree,  etc.,  he  no  doubt 
has  in  mind  the  expectation  of  his  own  nation  and 
church,  transformed  by  this  new  influence.  And 
he  looks  forward  to  the  time  when  the  fanatical, 
worldly,  and  unspiritual  conceptions  of  the  kingdom 
as  a  pohtical  institution  estabHshed  by  miraculous 
forces  and  of  the  Messianic  King  as  a  victorious  war- 
lord shall  be  eliminated  from  it  entirely. 

The  best  evidence  that  he  held  this  hope  and  pur- 
pose of  transforming  and  elevating  the  current  idea 
of  the  kingdom  is  revealed  in  the  bitter  and  grow- 

^  Simon  bar  Kocheba,  who  conquered  Jerusalem  and  about  fifty 
towns,  who  had  an  army  of  200,000  men,  and  was  only  put  down 
by  the  Romans  after  a  severe  struggle  in  a.d.  135. 

H 


98      JESUS   CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

ing  disappointment  expressed  in  his  own  sayings: 
*'A  prophet  is  not  without  honour,  save  in  his  own 
country"  (Matt.  13  157,  etc.).  "O  Jerusalem, 
Jerusalem,  thou  that  killest  the  prophets,  and  stonest 
them  which  are  sent  unto  thee,  how  oft  would  I 
have  gathered  thy  children  together,  even  as  a  hen 
gathereth  her  chickens  under  her  wings,  and  ye 
would  not "  (Matt.  23 :  37).  *'  Many  shall  come  from 
the  east  and  west,"  etc.  (Matt.  8:11).  ''He  hath 
blinded  their  eyes,  and  hardened  their  heart;  that 
they  should  not  see  with  their  eyes,  nor  understand 
with  their  heart,  and  be  converted,  and  I  should 
heal  them"  (John  12:40;  compare  Matt.  13:  15). 
The  parable  of  the  wedding  feast  appHes  here,  too. 
His  own  people  are  bidden  but  are  not  ready,  and 
so  outsiders  are  admitted. 

But,  inevitable  and  sad  though  his  complete 
break  with  the  Judaism  of  scribes  and  Pharisees  was, 
Jesus  lays  claim  to  the  title  of  Messiah,  as  being  the 
true  ethical  and  spiritual  representative  of  the  ideal 
kingdom.  He  refutes  the  necessity  of  a  Davidic 
or  heriditary  title.  "If  David  then  call  him  Lord, 
how  is  he  his  son  ?"  (Matt.  22 :  45,  Luke  20 :  44).  In 
one  of  the  last  acts  of  his  earthly  career,  the  entry 
into  Jerusalem  —  meek  and  lowly  and  riding  on 
an  ass  as  the  symbol  of  the  spiritual  character  of  his 
leadership  —  Jesus  yet  allows  himself  to  be  hailed 
as  Messiah.*^ 

^  I  cannot  here  enter  at  length  into  the  discussion  of  the  ques- 
tion whether  Jesus  claimed  to  be  the  long-expected  Messiah  of  the 


THE   CONDUCT   OF   THE    SOCIAL   LIFE  99 

The  Kingdom  of  Heaven,  which  was  the  general 
framework  of  his  teaching,  with  the  historical  out- 
growth therefrom  of  the  vast  developing  and  con- 
tinuing organization  called  the  Christian  Church, 
are  sufficient  evidence  that  Jesus  conceived  and 
planned  that  his  teaching  should  find  organized 
embodiment  in  social  institutions.     The  existence 

Jews  in  any  sense.  It  is  clear,  from  the  whole  drift  of  his  utter- 
ances and  from  his  attitude  toward  the  rulers  and  leaders  in 
the  Jewish  church,  that  he  utterly  rejected  the  conception  of  a 
worldly  and  political  Messiah  who  should  expel  the  Romans  and 
set  up  a  triumphant  kingdom  as  the  Vice-gerent  of  God  in  Jeru- 
salem. But  it  seems  to  me  equally  clear  that,  without  throwing  out 
so  many  passages  from  the  synoptic  gospels  that,  on  similar  prin- 
ciples of  sifting,  there  will  be  little  if  anything  left,  one  cannot 
avoid  the  conclusion  that  Jesus  regarded  himself  as  called  and 
sent  to  transform  and  elevate  the  prevailing  conception  of  his 
people  as  to  the  coming  of  the  reign  of  righteousness  upon  earth, 
to  purge  it  of  its  narrow  national  and  legal  features,  and,  by  trans- 
forming it  into  a  wholly  ethical  and  universal  notion,  to  make  the 
Jewish  framework  the  instrument  of  the  new  world-order.  Jesus 
regarded  his  own  immediate  mission  as  primarily  directed  to  his 
own  people  —  to  the  nation  whose  language,  tradition,  and  reli- 
gious heritage  he  shared.  He  valued  to  the  full  the  unique  privi- 
leges of  membership  in  the  nation  that  had  given  birth  to  and 
handed  down  the  teachings  of  Moses  and  the  prophets.  In  the 
earlier  period  of  his  ministry  he  cherished  the  hope  that  his 
countrymen  might  accept  his  teaching  and  especially  his  concep- 
tion of  the  new  order  or  rule  of  divine  righteousness.  He  con- 
cealed any  thought  he  may  have  then  had  of  himself  as  the  true 
Messiah.  But,  after  the  bitter  disappointment  of  his  two  rejec- 
tions in  Nazareth  and  the  unbending  opposition  of  scribes  and 
Pharisees,  together  with  the  (probable)  defection  of  many  half- 
hearted followers,  Jesus,  withdrawing  to  northern  Galilee  in 
loneliness  of  spirit,  finally  determines  to  test  the  insight  of  his 
own  immediate    followers.    At   Caesarea   Philippi   he  puts   the 


loo      JESUS   CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

of  the  church,  even  in  its  most  woful  aberrations, 
is  continued  testimony  to  the  social  effects  of  Jesus' 
teaching.  And  the  ideal  or  normative  character  of 
that  teaching  has  been  shown  again  and  again  in 
its  power  to  renovate  and  reform  the  earthly  insti- 
tution called  after  his  name.  It  is  not  a  part  of  my 
purpose  to  discuss  at  length  the  relation  between 

question,  "Whom  say  ye  that  I  am?"  Simon  Peter  answers, 
"Thou  art  the  Christ,"  and  Jesus,  accepting  the  designation, 
charges  them  not  to  reveal  it  (Matt.  16:13-20,  Mark  8:27-36, 
Luke  9:18-21).  Henceforward  he  prepares  them  for  the  inevi- 
table crisis,  when  the  hate  of  the  Jewish  rulers  shall  work  its  will. 
He  warns  them  and  tries  to  steel  them  to  meet  opposition, 
persecution,  and  personal  danger.  He  constantly  reminds  them 
of  what  they  must  sacrifice,  and,  at  the  same  time,  assures  them 
of  the  ultimate  triumph  of  the  new  order  and  of  the  reward  of 
eternal  life  thereon.  There  is  no  despair,  not  a  moment's  waver- 
ing on  his  part ;  but  there  now  enters  into  his  preaching  a  severer 
and  sterner  note.  The  final  act  in  his  revolutionary  transforma- 
tion of  the  accepted  Messianic  Ideal  is  his  mode  of  entry  into 
Jerusalem,  coupled  with  his  assumption  of  authority  in  the  temple 
and  his  claims  to  a  special  insight  into  the  nature  of  God. 
(Whether  or  not  Jesus  actually  used  the  term  "  son  of  God  "  with 
reference  to  himself  in  a  unique  sense,  it  is  certain  that  his  whole 
teaching  is  pervaded  by  a  quiet  but  unshakable  confidence  in  his 
own  perfect  knowledge  of  the  Father.)  Thus  the  final  crisis  of 
his  death  was  brought  on.  The  whole  development  is  so  psycho- 
logically probable,  the  dramatic  elements  in  the  history  are  so 
harmonious,  and  the  synoptic  gospels  agree  so  fully  on  all  essen- 
tial points  that  I  cannot  see  good  grounds  for  any  other  conclusion 
than  that  Jesus  did  regard  himself  as  the  true  Messiah  of  his 
people,  the  one  foretold  by  the  prophets,  and  sent  to  enlarge  and 
uplift  the  Messianic  conception  until  under  his  hands  it  should 
serve  for  "the  healing  of  the  nations."  That  so  radical  a  trans- 
formation of  the  current  notion  was,  in  effect,  its  abolition  does  not 
in  the  least  affect  this  conclusion. 


THE   CONDUCT   OF   THE   SOCIAL    LIFE  lOI 

the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  as  already  founded  ("in 
the  midst  of  you")  and  as  developing  slowly  by 
analogy  with  the  growth  of  natural  life,  and  the  King- 
dom of  Heaven  in  its  ultimate  state  of  consummation. 
I  will  only  say  that  the  two  aspects  seem  to  me  to 
be  complementary  rather  than  contradictory,  and 
that  it  was  natural  that,  in  the  later  days  of  his  life, 
Jesus,  when  his  departure  was  imminent  and  his 
message  seemed  in  danger  of  extinction,  should 
emphasize  the  final  triumph  of  his  kingdom  and  lay 
stress  on  the  consummation  of  his  work. 

In  the  earlier  Galilean  period  of  his  ministry 
Jesus  spoke  chiefly  the  joyful  and  inspiring  news 
of  the  immediate  founding  and  rapid  growth  of  the 
kingdom,  spoke  the  tidings  of  the  Father's  love, 
of  divine  Sonship,  of  the  joy  of  life  eternal,  etc. 
Later,  as  the  conflict  deepened  and  it  became  the 
settled  conviction  of  the  Master  that  he  must  die 
that  his  gospel  might  live  and  spread  abroad  amongst 
men,  he  emphasized  the  notion  of  the  final  consum- 
mation of  the  kingdom,  of  the  triumph  of  the  new 
order  in  spite  of  opposition  and  death.  There  is 
heard  in  his  teaching  a  sterner  and  more  strenuous 
note.  Here,  presumably,  he  made  some  use  of  the 
apocalyptic  expressions  current  in  his  day.  But 
it  is  neither  possible  nor  necessary  to  determine  here 
how  far  the  words,  attributed  to  him  in  the  Evangelists 
on  this  point,  are  coloured  by  the  later  expectation 
of  an  immediate  second  coming  or  whether  Jesus 
shared  this  expectation  in  the  sense  that  it  was  held 


UN/VER 


I02      JESUS    CHRIST    AND    CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

by  St.  Paul,  and  apparently  by  the  first  apostles  gen- 
erally. It  is  sufficient  to  insist  that  the  two  notions 
of  the  kingdom,  on  the  one  hand  as  present  and 
immanent  (*'in  the  midst  of  you"),  as  subject  to  a 
gradual  growth  (the  parable  of  the  leaven,  the  mustard 
seed,  etc.),  and,  on  the  other  hand,  as  future,  tran- 
scendent, and  perfected,  are  so  far  from  being  con- 
tradictory that  they  are  necessary  complements  one 
of  another.  To  accept  the  first  wholly  is  to  assume 
the  second.  A  moral  or  spiritual  process  in  the 
individual  and  the  race  that  has  no  definite  goal  and 
that  rests  on  no  faith  in  an  ultimate  and  perfect 
reality  is  surely  without  definite  meaning.^ 

Even  if  one  were  to  assume  that  Jesus  did  expect, 
as  did  the  early  apostles,  a  speedy  second  coming 
which  has  not  been  realized  in  the  literal  way  in 
which  it  is  depicted  in  the  gospels,  the  imperishable 
ethical  worth  of  that  conception  of  a  cosmic  rule 
of  righteousness,  a  Divine  moral  order,  whose 
constituent  elements  are  persons  living  in  jellow- 
shipy  is  not  in  the  least  affected  by  that  considera- 
tion. 

What  directly  concern  us  here  are  the  principles 
of  social  ethics  that  underlie  the  teachings.  If 
Jesus  deHberately  founded  a  social  order,  called  in 
the  terminology  of  his  own  time  and  country  the 
Kingdom  of  Heaven,  how  did  he  conceive  the  govern- 
ing principles  of  that  order?  In  beginning  this 
consideration  let  it  be  noted  that  the  ethical  life,  or 

*  See  appendix,  Ethics  and  Eschatology. 


THE   CONDUCT    OF   THE    SOCIAL    LIFE  103 

true  life,  Jesus  makes  absolutely  identical  and  conter- 
minous with  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven.^ 

We  may  summarize  Jesus'  principles  of  social 
life  as  follows :  — 

(i)  Life  in  the  new  order  is  one  of  service.  "But 
he  that  is  greatest  among  you  shall  be  your  servant" 
(Matt.  23:11;  20:26;  Mark  10:43-45).  "For 
whosoever  exalteth  himself  shall  be  abased :  and 
he  that  humbleth  himself  shall  be  exalted  "  (Luke 
14:11,  Matt.  23 :  12,  etc.).  "  The  Son  of  Man  came 
not  to  be  ministered  unto,  but  to  minister"  (Mark 
10:45).  In  short,  service  rendered  to  one's  fellow- 
members  in  the  commonwealth  of  humanity  is  the 
measure  of  true  greatness.  In  this  respect  the  judg- 
ments of  history  are  in  the  long  run  in  agreement 
with  the  Master.  Those  who  enjoy  a  worthy  im- 
mortality in  the  memories  of  men,  those  whose  names 
and  deeds  are  gladly  and  thankfully  recalled  from 
age  to  age,  are  mankind's  true  benefactors  —  its 
prophets  and  poets,  its  thinkers  and  inventors,  its 
reformers  and  statesmen;  not  its  great  egotists,  its 
rapacious  plunderers  and  bloody  conquerors.  No 
doubt  mankind  continues  to  dishonour  and  stone 

^  The  term  "  heaven  "  is  no  proof  that  the  kingdom  had  a  purely 
other-worldly  character.  This  term  refers  rather  to  the  ethical 
character  of  the  kingdom  than  to  its  space-relations.  It  is  the 
realm  of  that  which  is  spiritually  exalted,  the  realm  of  an  ethical 
humanity  founded  on  God,  not  a  realm  existing  in  far-off  space 
or  to  come  into  being  in  some  far-distant  time.  Indeed,  in  current 
Jewish  speech,  "  Heaven  "  meant  "  God  "  and  "  Kingdom  "  meant 
"rule,"  so  that  ''Kingdom  of  Heaven"  means  in  Jesus'  mouth 
"the  Rule  of  God"  or  "the  Rule  of  the  Father." 


I04      JESUS    CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

the  prophets  when  alive,  but,  in  the  end,  it  does 
justice,  however  tardily. 

The  serious  and  general  acceptance  of  Jesus' 
principle  of  service,  as  the  highest  privilege  and  re- 
ward of  action,  would  do  more  to  solve  social  prob- 
lems than  any  other  conceivable  plan.  It  would 
purify  poHtics,  it  would  abohsh  commercial  dishon- 
esty and  oppression,  it  would  heal  the  breach  be- 
tween capital  and  labour.  Let  a  man,  whether 
political  representative,  judge,  employer,  or  artisan, 
once  fully  recognize  and  accept  the  principle  that  to 
render  honest  and  unstinting  service  to  his  fellows 
is  to  become  a  worthy  person,  and  to  enter  into  the 
life  of  enduring  greatness;  then  there  will  be  no 
thought  on  his  part  of  personal  profit  at  the  expense 
of  others,  of  disloyalty  to  his  post,  of  adulterated 
goods,  of  inferior  workmanship.  This  principle 
of  true  greatness  is  astonishingly  simple  to  under- 
stand. It  is  vindicated  by  history,  and  our  social 
progress  is  traceable  chiefly  to  its  influence.  The 
men  who  have  truly  and  permanently  advanced  the 
cause  of  human  civilization  have  been  imbued  with 
the  principle  of  service. 

(2)  Service  is  to  be  rendered  according  to  need, 
not  according  to  desert.  "  Call  the  poor,  the  maimed, 
the  lame,  the  blind"  (Luke  14: 13).  **Give  to  every 
man  that  asketh  of  thee"  (Luke  6:30.  Compare 
Matt.  5  :  42  ;  19 :  21,  etc.).  Jesus  does  not  inculcate 
a  vague  philanthropy,  a  diluted  humanitarian  sym- 
pathy that  evaporates  in  an  emotional  mist.    He 


THE   CONDUCT   OF   THE   SOCIAL   LIFE  105 

insists  on  a  specific  service  to  be  rendered  to  definite 
and  needy  individuals.  He  would  not  have  thought 
much  of  an  enthusiasm  for  the  conversion  of  the 
heathen,  ten  thousand  miles  away,  that  was  blind  or 
indifferent  to  the  needs  and  feelings  of  the  dwellers 
on  the  next  street,  and  heedless  of  the  terrible  suffer- 
ings and  evils  of  child  labour,  insanitary  and  over- 
crowded dwellings,  the  wholesale  adulteration  of 
foods,  etc.  And,  on  the  other  hand,  the  story  of 
the  good  Samaritan  told  in  response  to  the  question, 
*^Who  is  my  neighbour?"  (Luke  10:29,  ff.)  means, 
not  simply  that  one  is  to  deal  with  private  cases  that 
come  to  one's  immediate  notice.  It  means,  too, 
that  wherever  there  is  a  pressing  need,  there  is  an 
obhgation  created.  The  social  principle  of  Jesus' 
ethics  involves  the  obhgation  that  one  shall,  in  one's 
pubUc  as  well  as  in  one's  private  fife,  do  one's  part 
positively  toward  the  removal  of  every  hindrance 
in  the  way  of  the  full  development  and  fruition  of 
every  human  person.  He  calls  men,  as  responsible 
and  rational  persons,  to  labour  for  the  upbuilding 
in  every  way  possible  of  a  higher  type  of  humanity. 
Hence,  while  it  is  a  mistaken  view  to  identify  Jesus' 
teaching  with  any  specific  and  local  scheme  of  social 
reform  or  sociaHstic  programme,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  acceptance  of  his  principles  involves  the  definite 
obhgation  to  consider,  with  open  and  earnest  mind, 
any  plan  for  social  betterment  that  may  hold  out  a 
promise  of  curing  social  ills,  and  to  contribute  the 
labour  and  the  thought  of  one's  own  personality 


Io6      JESUS    CHRIST    AND   CIVILIZATION  OF    TO-DAY 

toward  social  progress.  The  Master  knew  the  chang- 
ing and  uncertain  character  of  industrial  and  politi- 
cal institutions.  He  knew  that  states  and  poHcies, 
the  labour  and  industry  of  this  world,  are  due  to 
complex  conditions  that  arise  and  alter  in  the  evo- 
lution of  human  society.  ''The  fashion  of  this 
world  passeth  away"  (i  Cor.  7:31).  These  things 
are  transitory.  But  the  spiritual  forces  and  acti^ities 
on  which  depend  the  welfare  of  state  and  society  are 
eternal.  "Heaven  and  earth  shall  pass  away,  but 
my  words  shall  not  pass  away"  (Matt.  24:35). 
"My  kingdom  is  not  of  this  world"  (John  18:36). 
He  will  not  entangle  the  good  news  he  brings 
and  the  fellowship  he  institutes  with  any  local  and 
transitory  scheme  of  things.  The  conditions  of  his 
work  and  the  circumstances  of  his  life  prevented  his 
participation  in  the  activities  of  citizenship  or  the 
concerns  of  worldly  culture.  A  member  of  a  sub- 
ject nation  that  was  intensely  and  narrowly  patriotic, 
and  that  longed  for  a  heaven-sent  deliverer,  he  must 
abstain  from  any  utterance  or  step  that  would  pre- 
cipitate rebelHon  and  armed  conflict.  He  must  take 
care,  above  all,  that  the  new  order  which  he  insti- 
tuted be  not  confused,  to  perish,  with  Jewish  local 
and  temporal  concerns.  The  kingdom  of  the  spirit 
must  be  kept  clear  alike  of  Jewish  ecclesiasticism 
and  Roman  statecraft.  As  the  inaugurator  of  a  new 
spiritual  cosmos  or  order  of  Hfe  amongst  men,  his 
work  must  be  concentrated,  intensive,  simple,  directed 
with  single  eye  and  will   toward  its  absolute  goal. 


THE   CONDUCT    OF  THE    SOCIAL   LIFE  107 

But  the  Master  was  no  enemy  to  human  culture, 
no  ascetic  or  eremite.  He  loved  nature  and  human 
kind,  simple  joys,  human  rejoicings  at  weddings,  and 
the  hospitality  of  friends.  He  cannot  concern  himself 
with  science,  art,  or  industry  because  his  aim  is 
directed  toward  the  moral  foundations  of  human 
character,  without  which  these  activities  of  culture 
are  worthless  and  even  harmful.  In  principle,  he 
calls  us  to  labour  for  these  goods  just  in  so  far  as 
they  minister  to  fulness,  peace,  and  joy  in  the  in- 
ward life.  There  are  very  many  things  in  modem 
life  that  were  outside  the  scope  of  his  work,  but,  if 
we  get  from  him  the  true  perspective,  and  learn  to 
estimate  things  at  their  relative  values,  we  shall  find 
that  his  principle  of  service  according  to  need 
ennobles  art,  humanizes  industry,  and  gives  a. soul 
to  science.  And,  with  reference  to  these  matters 
commonly  called  "social  problems,"  while  this 
principle  gives  us  no  cut-and-dried  scheme,  it  urges 
and  quickens  us  to  render  the  service  of  our  minds 
and  characters  to  the  work  of  social  betterment. 
What  Jesus  contributes  to  social  betterment  is  the  en- 
noblement of  personal  character,  the  deepening  of 
personal  obligation,  and  the  resolve  to  make  every 
institution  and  organization  subservient  to  the  fel- 
lowship of  free  men. 

The  uplifting  of  society  is  the  upHfting  of  its  in- 
dividual members.  The  solution  of  social  problems 
is  the  development  of  noble  personalities  and  the 
extension  of  their  influence. 


Io8      JESUS    CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

(3)  The  motive  for  rendering  service  is  personal 
love ;  i.e.  respect  and  regard  for  the  worth  of  every 
human  soul.  *'Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbour  as 
thyself,"  etc.  (Matt.  19:19  and  22:39,  etc.). 

Personal  service  is  not  to  be  limited  to  a  return  of 
favours  rendered  or  to  be  given  in  the  expectation 
of  favours.  It  must  know  no  limits  of  friendship 
or  enmity,  of  social  position,  creed,  or  nationahty. 
And  why?  Simply  because  all  men,  as  having 
originated  from  the  same  Divine  Father,  have  in 
them  a  spark  of  that  personal  nature  which  has 
infinite  worth.  Jesus'  teaching  of  personal  service 
and  love  follows  directly  from  his  doctrine  as  to  the 
immeasurable  value  of  the  individual.  If,  however 
repugnant  or  indififerent  to  us  a  certain  person  may 
be,  that  person,  too,  has  his  individual  share  in 
the  divinely  originated  spiritual  nature  of  humanity, 
then  we  must  treat  that  nature  with  reverence  in 
him  and  render  it  willing  service,  otherwise  we 
injure  it  in  ourselves. 

(4)  The  supreme  evidence  and  result  of  the  in- 
dwelling power  of  this  motive  of  love  is  unstinted 
forgiveness,  a  good-will  that  conquers  and  banishes 
all  anger  and  hate,  and  that  is  not  confined  and  guided 
in  its  beneficence  by  the  measurement  of  personal 
desert.  Forgive  "until  seventy  times  seven"  (Matt. 
18:22).  "Love  your  enemies,  bless  them  that 
curse  you,  do  good  to  them  that  hate  you,  and  pray 
for  them  which  despitefully  use  you,  and  persecute 
you;    that  ye  may  be  the  children  of  your  Father 


THE   CONDUCT   OF   THE   SOCIAL   LIFE  1 09 

which  is  in  heaven"  (Matt.  5:44,  45).  The  high 
destiny  of  man  is  nothing  less  than  to  seek  a  per- 
fection which  shall  be  the  same  in  kind  as  the 
perfection  of  the  Father-God,  in  whose  image  man 
is  made. 

Jesus  regards  God  as  indeed  supreme  in  power, 
wisdom,  and  knowledge,  but  for  him  God's  central 
and  all-controlling  attribute  is  Love,  infinite  and 
unwearying,  that  expresses  itself  toward  man  in 
beneficence  unstinted  and  bestowed  beyond  all 
desert.  "For  he  maketh  his  sun  to  rise  on  the  evil 
and  on  the  good,  and  sendeth  rain  on  the  just  and 
on  the  unjust"  (Matt.  5 :  45).  In  these  words, 
beautiful  in  their  simphcity  and  depth,  Jesus  brings 
as  witness  to  the  Father's  love  the  prodigal  bounty 
of  his  creative  power  in  nature,  ever  bestowing  life 
and  the  gifts  of  warming  sun  and  fertiHzing  rain 
that  cause  life  to  germinate  and  flourish  anew. 
Man,  in  the  heart  of  his  imperfection  and  finitude, 
has  a  spark  of  the  divine  fire  of  love,  and  may,  by 
kindhng  this  into  flame,  become  in  truth  a  Son  of 
the  Immortal  Love. 

Rudolf  Eucken  rightly  says  ^  that  the  enunciation 
of  this  principle  and  its  incarnation  in  a  hfe  are  some- 
thing absolutely  new  and  without  paraUel  in  the 
earher  history  of  reHgious  and  ethical  systems. 

(5)  The  true  ethical  and  spiritual  life  for  the  in- 
dividual is  truly  social.  The  man  who  cherishes 
envy,  ill-will,  or  hatred  against  his  fellow  injures 


no      JESUS    CHRIST    AND    CIVILIZATION    OF    TO-DAY 

his  own  life  as  well  as  that  of  his  fellow,  by  per- 
petuating division  and  discord.  The  one-sidedness 
and  poverty  of  the  separate  individual  life  is  removed 
in  the  fellowship  with  the  common  life.  The  goal 
of  the  individual  life  should  be  union  with  the  spirit 
of  humanity.  Through  this  gateway  alone  does 
one  ascend  to  God.  "Blessed  are  the  merciful" 
(Matt.  5:7).  "  Blessed  are  the  peacemakers  "  (Matt. 
5  .-9).  "First  be  reconciled  to  thy  brother,  and  then 
come  and  offer  thy  gift"  (Matt.  5:24).  And  the 
man,  who,  without  active  ill-will,  is  simply  insen- 
sate to  the  lives  of  his  fellows  and  indifferent  to  their 
existence  and  careers,  is  destroying  his  own  life. 
He  is  shutting  himself  off  from  the  atmosphere  that 
his  soul  needs,  —  the  atmosphere  of  the  common 
spiritual  life,  which  pervades  the  age  and  which  lives 
and  develops  from  age  to  age.  Such  an  one  is 
stopping  up  the  very  fountains  of  life.  For  every 
individual  life  is  drawn  from  the  conmion  source, 
nurtured  on  the  achievements  of  the  race,  fed  and 
guided  by  the  traditions  of  the  great  stream  of  hu- 
manity as  it  rolls  down  from  the  past  ages  of  man's 
life.  Every  individual  grows,  is  trained  and  stimu- 
lated ever  anew  by  the  incoming  of  the  tide  of  the 
great  life  of  humanity  past,  present,  and  to  come, 
which  sweeps  away  from  his  own  life  the  stagnant 
eddies  of  ignorance  and  the  impurities  of  an  isolated 
self.  The  work  of  culture  repeats  itself  and  moves 
onward  in  the  individual' soul  only  as  this  opens  to 
the   experiences   of   humanity,  and   contributes   its 


THE    CONDUCT    OF    THE    SOCIAL    LIFE  III 

labour  to  the  further  fulfilment  of  all  human  possi- 
bilities. He  who  isolates  himself  and  sits  indifferent 
in  his  own  dark  cave  is  treating  his  own  soul,  not  as 
an  organism  or  living  spirit,  functioning  and  growing 
in  co-relation  with  other  Hke  organisms,  but  as  a 
dead  thing,  an  exclusive  centre  of  inertia,  an  in- 
divisible material  monad. 

From  such  considerations  we  may  begin  to  appre- 
ciate Jesus'  feeling  of  his  intimate  relation  with  his 
followers,  the  meaning  of  the  Last  Supper,  and  the 
deep  and  touching  harmony  of  the  symboHc  act  of 
washing  the  disciples'  feet,  as  related  in  the  fourth 
gospel,  with  the  fundamental  character  of  his  work 
and  teaching  in  regard  to  the  larger  and  more  abid- 
ing spiritual  life  that  may  be  entered  upon  only  by 
the  way  of  ministry  and  sacrifice. 

The  death  of  Jesus  thus  becomes  not  only  the 
inevitable  consequence  of  his  fidelity  to  his  mission, 
not  only  his  final  witness  to  his  own  sincerity  and 
single-mindedness,  but  the  perfect  type  and  symbol 
of  the  ethical  principle  enunciated  in  the  words,  ''He 
that  is  greatest  among  you  shall  be  your  servant" 
(Matt.  23:11,  Luke  22:26).  ''For  even  the  Son 
of  Man  came  not  to  be  ministered  unto,  but  to 
minister,  and  to  give  his  life  a  ransom  for  many  " 
(Mark  10:45). 

The  principle  of  life  through  death,  of  the  growth 
of  the  spirit  through  sacrifice,  which  is  expressed  or 
impHed  in  so  many  of  Jesus'  sayings,  —  e.g.  "Except 
a  corn  of  wheat  fall  into  the  ground  and  die  it  abid- 


112       JESUS    CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION    OF   TO-DAY 

eth  alone :  but  if  it  die,  it  bringeth  forth  much  fruit " 
(John  12  :  24),  —  receives  its  final  and  perfect  illustra- 
tion in  the  Master's  own  death.  He  lays  down  his 
life  in  fidelity  to  that  life's  work,  to  the  gospel  of 
the  new  order,  and  to  the  little  band  of  men  that 
have  entered  upon  this  order.  More  than  this,  he 
dies  that  men  everywhere  may  the  more  clearly  see 
and  be  drawn  to  that  for  which  he  had  Hved.  Fully 
conscious  of  his  unique  power  and  knowledge,  of 
a  unique  relation  to  the  Father- God,  Jesus  volun- 
tarily completes  his  work  of  ministration  and  for- 
ever embodies  the  gospel  of  service  through  the 
suffering  and  humihation  of  a  death  on  a  cross  with 
common  malefactors.  In  this  death  he  triumphs  over 
opposition  and  hatred,  and,  in  the  Easter  experience, 
the  disciples  receive  triumphant  assurance  that  the 
Master  has  indeed  died  to  live.  By  his  death  the  line 
is  clearly  drawn  between  his  gospel  and  all  pruden- 
tial and  utilitarian  systems  of  worldly  ethics  as  well 
as  between  his  teachings  and  the  attitude  of  scribe 
and  Pharisee.  Jesus'  death  is  profoundly  inter- 
preted in  the  words  of  the  Fourth  Gospel,  "I  am  the 
vine,  ye  are  the  branches"  (John  15  :  5). 

The  necessity  of  his  sacrifice  is  the  consequence  of 
the  fact  that  he  regards  himself  as  the  head  of  the 
human  race,  the  leader  or  redeemer  of  humanity 
into  the  new  order.  This  sacrifice  embodies  his 
solidarity  with  the  race.  It  is  the  Son  oj  Man 
that  must  suffer  many  things.  At  this  point  ethics 
passes   into   reHgion.     Moral   action   is  completed 


THE    CONDUCT    OF    THE   SOCIAL    LIFE  II3 

and  transcended  in  faith.  The  individual  life  be- 
comes one  with  the  perfect  and  universal  life.  The 
struggles  and  shortcomings  of  the  individual  will 
are  overcome  by  union  with  the  Christ-life.  Dis- 
cords are  aboHshed  from  the  heart,  and  the  Hmits  and 
weaknesses  of  isolated  individuality  are  overcome 
in  the  peace  that  passeth  understanding.  This 
peace  involves  fellowship  with  man  and  God. 

We  reach  the  limits  of  our  undertaking  at  this 
point  where  ethics  passes  into  faith  and  mysticism. 
The  final  step  in  Jesus'  social  teaching,  the  goal  of 
spiritual  self-fulfilment  through  sacrifice,  is  mystical 
union  with  the  universal  and  Eternal  Life  through 
the  absolute  service  of  the  higher  Hfe  in  humanity. 
Mysticism,  born  of  the  desire  for  perfect  union  of 
the  individual  life  with  an  absolute  and  universal 
life,  meets  us  in  some  form  in  all  higher  reHgions 
and  in  most  great  philosophies.  We  find  it  in  Plato 
and  Plotinus;  in  Brahmanism  and  Buddhism;  in 
St.  Paul,  Origen,  St.  Augustine,  and  Meister  Eck- 
art;  in  Spinoza,  Fichte,  Hegel,  and  Schopenhauer. 
What  distinguishes  the  mysticism,  in  which  Jesus' 
teaching  issues,  from  all  purely  speculative  types 
of  mysticism,  is  that  the  way  to  the  completion  of 
life  by  union  with  the  Universal  Life,  as  Jesus 
presents  it,  is  the  practical,  ethical  way  of  loving 
service  and  willing  sacrifice  for  the  sake  of  other 
persons.  It  is  not  by  a  speculative  stripping  away 
of  all  definite  attributes,  not  by  withdrawal  from 
the  common  duties  of  life,  not  by  intellectual  vision 
I 


114      JE3US    CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION    OF   TO-DAY 

or  meditation  or  ecstatic  swoon  that  one  wins  one's 
way  to  God.  The  way  to  God,  a  way  that  all  alike, 
learned  or  unlearned,  may  travel,  is  the  dedication 
of  one's  personal  powers  to  the  service  of  human 
personahty  in  the  common  affairs  of  Hfe.  Man 
mounts  to  God  through  the  particular  and  local 
and  personal,  through  the  dedication  of  individual 
will  that  breaks  down  the  confines  of  self  and  opens 
the  flood-gates  of  humanity.  The  way  of  Jesus 
Christ  to  God  is  a  way  that  leads  not  by  speculative 
and  monastic  retirement  away  from  humanity,  but 
through  the  personal  and  social  life  to  God. 

Hence  the  activities  of  civilization  and  the  entire 
work  of  culture  in  industry,  art,  science,  and  social 
intercourse,  in  so  far  as  these  minister  to  the  fulfil- 
ment of  personalities  in  freedom,  power,  and  har- 
mony of  life  are  at  once  expressions  of  the  eternal 
order  of  life  in  humanity  and  the  unceasing  enrich- 
ment of  that  life.  The  universal  life,  the  Hfe  of  God 
in  man,  is  at  once  expressed  and  more  fully  realized 
in  the  historical  development  of  culture  and  in  the 
improvement  of  the  social  order.  The  spiritual 
ground  of  individual  existence  is  a  life  at  once  eter- 
nal and  historical,  at  once  universal  and  personal. 
The  source  and  goal  of  the  historical  and  social  hfe 
of  human  personahty  is  a  Divine  Life,  never  with- 
drawn from  the  struggle  and  the  pathos  of  man's 
history.  Man  enters  into  this  life  not  by  the  loss  of 
individuality,  but  by  its  perfection  through  service 
in  the  social  and  historical  order  of  human  culture. 


THE   CONDUCT   OF    THE    SOCIAL  LIFE  II5 

(6)  There  is  an  ethical  law  of  compensation  in 
the  ordering  and  government  of  the  universe,  v^hereby 
those  who  have  suffered  here  from  poverty  and  dis- 
ease, while  the  rich  have  enjoyed  comfort  and  ease 
in  absolute  indifference  to  their  fellows'  suffering, 
shall  be  rewarded ;  while  the  callous  indifference  of 
the  others  shall  be  punished.  See  the  parable  of 
Lazarus  and  the  rich  man  (Luke  i6:  25  ff.).  The 
significance  of  this  story  seems  to  be  often  over- 
looked. Through  its  pictorial  framework  there 
gleams  the  doctrine  of  a  moral  order  of  the  universe. 
The  cosmic  structure  of  things  is  not  only  rational 
but  righteous.  Love  indeed  rules  supreme,  but  the 
peace  of  its  fellowship  is  reared  on  the  foundations 
of  justice  to  the  individual  soul. 

Jesus'  teaching  and  deeds,  then,  inculcate  the  most 
absolute  principle  of  social  service  and  personal  inter- 
communion. And  the  fundamental  principle  of 
this  teaching  is  the  absolute  worth  of  every  human 
individual.  This  is  the  ultimate  norm,  or  criterion, 
by  which  all  social  institutions  are  to  be  measured, 
and  the  supreme  principle  which  must  guide  the 
social  activity  of  the  individual.  He  regards  society 
as  a  communion  of  free  and  responsible  persons.  It 
does  not  require  much  space,  then,  to  state  what  the 
bearing  of  Jesus'  ethical  teaching  is  on  social  reform, 
and  in  what  relations  his  ethical  principles  stand  to 
the  organized  institutions  of  industrial  and  political 
society.  If  the  be-all  and  end-all  of  society  consist 
in  the  mere  perfection  of  organized  machinery,  in 


Il6      JESUS    CHRIST    AND   CIVILIZATION  OF    TO-DAY 

a  cut -and -dried  industrial  and  political  system,  then 
Jesus  has  no  direct  message  to  society.  If  man  can 
become  truly  good  and  blessed,  if  the  highest  powers  of 
humanity  can  be  brought  to  fruition,  by  any  system 
of  social  machinery ;  in  other  words,  if  the  individual 
can  be  made  good  from  without,  by  legislation  and 
institutions,  and  if  a  perfect  social  machinery  be 
possible,  i.e.  external  institutions  that  will  reaHze 
the  absolutely  perfect  ethical  life,  then  the  ethical 
ideals  of  Jesus  can  be  dispensed  with.  If  virtuous 
character,  without  which  no  state  can  prosper,  is 
made  solely  from  without  and  not  developed  from 
within,  then,  with  increase  of  political  wisdom,  we 
may  dispense  with  Jesus'  teaching.  If,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  inner  will,  or  rational  spirit,  of  the  ethically 
responsible  person  must  always  transcend,  in  its 
absolute  worth,  its  infinite  moral  capacity,  and  its 
autonomous  responsibility,  any  system  of  social  or 
poHtical  institutions,  then  Jesus  supplies  both  mo- 
tives and  guiding  principles  for  social  activity  and 
reform  in  industrial  and  political  spheres  as  well  as 
in  family  and  in  church.  For  Jesus'  conception 
of  the  ideal  humanity  is  that  of  a  society  of  free,  self- 
directing  personalities,  each  of  which  possesses  in 
himself  and  recognizes  in  others  an  individual  life 
and  character  of  infinite  worth  and  dignity.  Every 
member  of  this  spiritual  kingdom  is  at  once  an  end- 
in-himself  and  finds  his  true  life  as  a  spiritual  being 
in  interaction  and  communion  with  his  fellows. 
This  spiritual  society  or  commonwealth  of  persons, 


THE   CONDUCT   OF   THE   SOCIAL   LIFE  I17 

usually  called  by  Jesus  "the  Kingdom  of  Heaven," 
by  its  nature  transcends  all  existing  human  institu- 
tions and  organized  societies.  It  can  never  find 
complete  expression  under  the  present  conditions  of 
human  social  life.  Therefore,  in  respect  to  all 
actual  organized  forms  of  human  society,  it  remains 
an  ideal,  and  its  ultimate  reality  and  final  authority 
depend  on  the  existence  and  nature  of  God,  the  ulti- 
mate source  of  the  conditions  and  possibilities  of 
human  life. 

Nevertheless,  although  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven 
remains  in  relation  to  actual  human  social  experience 
an  ideal,  it  has  shown  throughout  history  its  power 
of  interpenetrating  and  uplifting,  of  spiritualizing 
and  refining,  the  institutions  and  organizations  which 
spring  up  naturally  out  of  the  needs  and  impulses 
of  man  as  a  social  being. 

Notwithstanding  its  frequent  aberrations,  the 
Christian  church  has  tried,  from  time  to  time,  to 
realize  a  purer,  juster,  more  humane  type  of  society. 
And  the  state  and  the  family  have  likewise  shown 
the  permeating  and  uplifting  power  of  Jesus'  ideal 
of  humanity. 

Furthermore,  whenever  the  church  has  wandered 
far,  as  it  has  frequently  done,  from  the  ideal  of  Jesus, 
it  has  been  corrected  and  turned  again  into  the  right 
paths,  not  by  influence  from  without,  but  by  a  return 
to  Jesus'  own  conception,  and  by  submitting  more 
loyally  and  open-mindedly  to  the  influence  of  his 
personaHty.    The  "return  to  the  historical  Jesus" 


Il8      JESUS    CHRIST    AND   CIVILIZATION    OF   TO-DAY 

is  always  the  hopeful  sign  of  reform  and  a  renewed 
spiritual  life. 

Jesus'  conception  of  the  kingdom  as  a  society  of 
perfected  spiritual  individuals  transcends  the  exist- 
ing conditiojis ,  of  human  organization.     But  with- 


onaitiom 
us  conce 


out  this  conception  of  a  transcendent  society  of  per- 
sons, and  without  the  conviction  that  the  human 
individual  in  his  social,  intellectual,  and  aesthetic 
activities  has  his  roots  in  the  order  of  the  cosmos, 
all  efforts  to  establish  a  better  and  more  permanent 
type  of  society  must  fail.  For,  without  this  convic- 
tion of  the  supreme  worth  of  man's  spiritual  nature, 
the"  activities  of  social  reform,  the  endeavour  after 
better  conditions  of  living,  after  a  healthier  and  more 
cheerful  environment,  and  an  increase  of  opportunity 
for  the  individual,.,  must  all  degenerate  into  a_race 
for  the  mere  increase  of  sensuous  gratifications. 
Without  this  transcendent  conception  of  the  worth 
of  life,  the  end  or  aim  of  life  which  will  govern  the 
multitude  must  be  simply  that  of  the  increased  satis- 
faction of  sensuous  desires,  the  multiplication  and 
intensification  of  enjoyments,  in  food  and  raiment, 
in  amusements,  etc.  Without  a  definite  ideal  of 
social  justice,  springing  from  a  recognition  of  the 
inherent  worth  of  every  individual  and  the  impas- 
sable limits  of  mutual  respect  for  one  another's 
persons,  men  will  recognize  no  limits  in  their  search 
for  power  and  wealth,  for  enjoyment  and  gratifica- 
tion of  the  senses.  Eor,  if  man  neglects,  or.  denies 
the  reahty  of  his  spiritual  nature  and  capacities,  the 


THE   CONDUCT   OF   THE    SOCIAL   LIFE  ll^ 

lower  or  sensuous  nature  will  cease  to  recognize  any 
limits  but  those  of  power  and  opportunity. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  notion  of  society  as  the 
instrument  for  the  perfecting  of  man's  life  on  the 
spiritual  side,  i.e.  for  the  perfecting  of  the  life  of 
enduring  truth  and  beauty  as  well  as  of  righteousness 
and  social  harmony,  springs  directly  out  of  Jesus' 
notion  of  human  destiny.  The  social  ideal  of  uni- 
versal justice,  and  the  very  conception  of  social  in- 
stitutions as  opportunities  for  the  realization  of  man's 
higher  nature,  are  directly  involved  in  Jesus'  teach- 
ing as  to  the  inherent  worth  of  the  human  individual ; 
and  the  social  ideals  of  Christianity  hence  spring 
directly  out  of,  and  must  be  always  evaluated  in 
relation  to,  this  notion  of  the  transcendent  aspect 
of  the  individual  life.  For  the  follower  of  Jesus  no 
social  institution  is  an  end-in-itself.  For  him  the 
value  of  any  form  of  social  organization  is  determined 
with  reference  to  the  ultimate  conception  of  society 
as  a  sp)iritual  and  free  communion  of  persons. 

Furthermore,  Jesus'  teaching  of  mutual  service 
as  the  highest  form  of  discipleship,  together  with  the 
supreme  example  of  his  own  life  and  death,  express 
his  recognition  of  sacrifice  or  service  as  the  great  in- 
strument of  human  redemption,  or  the  uplifting  of 
man  from  his  lower  and  egoistic  self  to  a  higher  and 
more  universal  life.  Herein  we  find  the  fullest  ex- 
pression and  embodiment  of  the  principle  of  human 
solidarity,  of  the  inescapable  spiritual  interdepen- 
dence of  men. 


CHAPTER   VI 

THE  IMPERFECTIONS   OF  LIFE 

The  feeling  of  an  infinite  worth  and  destiny  in 
the  human  spirit  has  grown  stronger  in  modem  times 
with  the  increase  and  spread  of  knowledge  and  through 
the  triumphs  of  applied  science  which  are  in  them- 
selves witnesses  to  the  power  of  the  spirit  of  man. 
And,  on  the  other  hand,  the  new  intellectual  horizons 
which  have  been  opened  out  by  science  —  the  ex- 
tension of  our  astronomical  world. to  infinity,  the 
analyses  of  nature  into  its  infinitesimal  elements  by 
physical  and  chemical  methods,  and  the  widening 
of  thjs  world's  history  by  the  biological  doctrine  of 
evolution  to  a  process  disappearing  behind  us  in  the 
mists  of  an  infinite  past  and  with  its  goal  vanishing 
ahead  of  us  in  the  endlessness  of  the  future, — this 
revelation  of  an  infinite  about  us  and  behind  us, — 
an  infinite  complexity  within  the  atoms  as  well  as 
an  infinite  extent  in  the  cosmos  and  an  infinite 
duration  through  which  rolls  the  unresting  process 
of  things  —  all  this  dizzies  the  thought  of  man  and 
makes  his  own  narrow  and  brief  individual  existence 
seem  insignificant.  But,  out  of  the  contrast  of  the 
briefness  of  his  earthly  life  and  the  uncertainty  of 
his  bodily  fortunes  with  the  infinitely  complex  and 


THE    IMPERFECTIONS    OF    LIFE  121 

infinitely  extended  universe  discovered  by  his  own 
thought  and  mirrored  therein,  there  emerges  with 
greater  insistence  the  demand  for  some  other  foun- 
dation for  his  spirit  than  that  afforded  by  an  ephem- 
eral bodily  existence  tied  down  within  the  narrow 
limits  of  this  spatial  and  material  world.  ^ 

Furthermore,  while  the  sense  of  a  certain  infinite 
capacity  of  reach  in  the  human  soul  has  been  clari- 
fied and  deepened  by  the  triumphant  progress  of 
the  human  mind  in  science  and  in  its  technical  appli- 
cations, this  growing  success  of  mind  in  mastering 
the  physical  world  has  neither  quenched  nor  satis- 
fied the  deeper  longings  of  the  spirit. 

Railways  and  telephones,  electric  lights  and  pain- 
less surgery,  do  not  of  themselves  bring  perfect 
happiness  to  the  soul.  The  failure  of  scientific  and 
technical  progress  of  themselves  to  uplift  and  satisfy 
the  hearts  of  men  is  most  emphatically  revealed  in 
the  social  diseases,  miseries,  and  unrest,  whose  growth 
seems  to  keep  pace  with  the  material  progress  of 
civilization.  The  intellectual  mastery  and  control 
of  nature  which,  it  would  seem,  should  increase  the 
general  comfort  and  well-being  and  raise  the  general 
level  of  the  material  conditions  of  Hving  has  not 
done  so  at  all.  We  have  learned  that  it  is  one  thing  to 
produce  in  abundance  the  instruments  for  the  susten- 
tion and  well-being  of  the  physical  man  and  quite 
another  thing  to  distribute  them  equitably.  More- 
over, we  have  learned  that  the  needs  of  man  grow 
with  his  material  progress,  and  those  who  have  sought 


122      JESUS    CHRIST    AND    CIVILIZATION    OF    TO-DAY 

enduring  satisfaction  in  the  enjoyment  of  wealth 
and  the  pursuit  of  pleasure  have  found  their  deHghts 
turn  to  hollowness  and  their  desires  to  goads  that 
urge  them  on  to  feverish  pursuit  only  to  mock  them 
with  the  hollowness  of  sensuous  gratifications. 

In  truth  those  whose  Hves  are  given  up  to  the  mere 
pursuit  of  physical  enjoyment  recognize  in  calm 
moments  that  they  are  not  attaining  enduring  satis- 
faction for  the  soul.  And  those  who,  with  higher 
aims,  seek  truth  and  goodness  through  the  efforts 
of  thought  and  will  in  science  and  right  action,  al- 
though their  Hves  are  the  more  noble  and  do  attain 
enduring  satisfactions,  yet  must  recognize,  just  be- 
cause they  earnestly  pursue  noble  objects,  that  the 
goal  of  perfect  Truth  and  Holiness  seems  far  beyond 
them,  and  inaccessible  by  their  own  unaided  efforts. 
Hence  it  is  not  merely  the  hampering  external  con- 
ditions of  life,  —  physical,  economic,  and  social,  — 
that  seem  to  shut  out  our  souls  from  the  satisfaction 
of  their  deepest  longings.  It  is  rather  something 
in  the  nature  of  the  soul  itself  —  a  something  which 
gives  it  power  to  feel  and  seek  the  in-finite  or  perfect 
in  truth  and  goodness  and  beauty,  but  does  not  bring 
the  power  to  attain  these  ideals  under  the  present 
conditions  of  its  existence.  The  reaHzation  of  its 
visions  by  the  spirit  of  man  seems  hampered  on  the 
one  hand  by  this  ''muddy  vesture  of  decay"  which 
it  must  inhabit ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  it  seems  to 
be  an  essential  characteristic  of  the  human  spirit 
that  its  visions  must  always  reach  far  beyond  its 


THE    IMPERFECTIONS    OF     LIFE  1 23 

attainments,  that  its  imagination  must  transcend 
the  actual  power  of  thought  to  grasp  the  truth,. and 
its  ethical  ideals  forever  pass  the  limits  of  its  will 
and  power  to  realize  goodness.  In  moments  of 
freshness  and  strength  of  spirit,  when  aspiration  is 
on  the  wing,  man  hears  gladly  the  words,  "Be  ye 
perfect."  But  in  moments  of  retrospection  and  re- 
view, when  aspiration  has  run  its  course,  whether 
of  success  or  failure,  and  action  is  stilled  and  strength 
exhausted,  man  recognizes  the  truth  of  the  words, 
"When  ye  shall  have  done  all  those  things  which  are 
commanded  you,  say,  We  are  unprofitable  ser- 
vants" (Luke  17: 10). 

There  is  a  satisfaction  of  a  good  conscience,  a 
satisfaction  healthy  and  right.  But  this  satisfaction 
exists  along  with  and  in  contrast  with  a  profound 
dissatisfaction  with  our  achievements,  with  the  sense 
of  our  weakness  and  failure  in  the  face  of  the  vision 
of  perfection  and  of  our  aspiration  thereafter.  This 
aspect  of  the  spiritual  life  can  never  be  eliminated 
so  long  as  a  spark  of  the  spirit  remains  in  a  man. 
Neither  bodily  comfort  and  pleasure  nor  the  pursuit 
of  science  or  art  can  quench  this  spark.  Indeed 
the  latter  pursuits  do  tend  to  keep  it  alive. 

This  sense  of  our  failure  to  achieve,  of  our  recre- 
ancy to  ideals,  our  blindness  to  visions,  of  the  gap 
between  deed  and  aspiration,  was  fully  recognized  by 
Jesus  as  an  integral  aspect  of  the  spiritual  life.  See 
especially  the  story  of  the  Pharisee  and  the  publican, 
the  contrast  between  "Lord,  I  thank  thee  that  lam 


124      JESUS    CHRIST    AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

not  as  other  men  are,  or  even  as  this  publican,"  and 
*'Lord,  be  merciful  to  me  a  sinner"  (Luke  i8  :  9-14)- 

This  sense  of  failure  and  weakness,  of  deadness 
of  heart  and  blindness  of  sight,  is  the  consciousness 
of  sin.  It  is  the  fashion  to-day  in  some  quarters  to 
regard  the  consciousness  of  sin  as  a  pathological 
product  of  Hebraism  and  Christianity.  It  is  pointed 
out  that  the  Greeks  were  devoid  of  it  ^  and  that  many 
good  men  do  not  have  it  to-day.  Reference  is  made 
to  the  spiritual  torture  and  even  insanity  which  the 
sense  of  the  inescapable  burden  of  sin  has  wrought 
in  many  souls,  and  no  doubt  the  consciousness  of 
sin  can  take  and  often  has  taken  morbid  and  harm- 
ful shapes.  But  that  is  no  good  reason  for  seeking 
to  eliminate  it.  And  indeed  it  cannot  be  eliminated 
from  any  soul  conscious  of  the  possibilities  of  the 
spiritual  life  and  of  its  own  failure  to  realize  them. 

For  the  sense  of  sin  or  moral  failure  springs  from 
the  contrast  between  our  actual  deeds  and  states 
and  the  infinite  Ideal  of  HoHness  which  is  present 
to  our  vision.  The  Christian  emphasis  on  the  nature 
of  sin  is  due  to  the  presence  in  Christian  thought 
and  the  actual  presence  in  the  personal  life  of  the 
Christian  disciple  of  the  vision  of  an  infinitely  Holy 
God,  the  Alone-Good,  as  Jesus  presents  Him.  It 
is  because  of  the  abiding  presence  in  life  of  a  God 
who  is  perfect  Love  as  well  as  perfect  Truth  that  the 
Christian  must  ever  feel  his  unworthiness  and  his 
incapacity  to  attain  the  ideal,  and  here  it  is  that  the 
*  One  surely  finds  it  in  ^schylus,  SophocTes,  and  Plato ! 


THE   IMPERFECTIONS    OF   LIFE  1 25 

ethical  attitude  passes  over  into  the  specifically 
rehgious.  Although  we  fall  short,  God  is  with  us. 
The  Ideal  is  not  a  cold  and  lonely  summit  of  good- 
ness forever  inaccessible  to  human  effort.  If  we 
cannot  now  realize  it  by  our  own  deeds,  yet,  as  life 
and  love,  it  comes  to  us  and  dwells  with  us  and  heals 
and  inspires  us  by  its  presence. 

The  pubHcan  went  down  to  his  house  justified,  — 
justified  because  in  utter  humiHty  and  reverence 
before  God's  perfection  he  went  home  with  the  vision 
and  worship  of  the  perfect  in  his  heart.  For  in  truth 
the  highest  quality  in  human  life  is  that  spontaneous 
love  and  worship  of  Perfect  Goodness  of  which  the 
reverse  side  is  the  disparagement  of  one's  self  and  the 
sense  of  failure  and  sin.  To  be  still  able  to  love  and 
adore  that  Perfect  Goodness  in  which  there  is  no 
struggle  and  no  gap  between  vision  and  achievement, 
between  desire  and  deed,  this  it  is  that  justifies  or 
makes  a  man  right  in  the  midst  of  his  own  weakness 
and  sin. 

For  the  heartfelt  sense  of  sin  and  weakness  arises 
from  the  midst  of  the  very  worship  of  Divine  Per- 
fection or,  as  we  might  say,  it  is  out  of  the  very  midst 
of  the  vision  and  love  of  God's  goodness  that  there 
springs  the  confession  of  our  own  weakness.  And 
the  worshipful  love  of  the  Perfect  becomes  the  spring 
and  source  of  fresh  strength  for  action.  Out  of 
our  very  sense  of  moral  weakness  there  rises  a  fresh 
success,  out  of  the  very  midst  of  our  consciousness 
of  failure  and  of  impotence  there  rises  the  joy  and 


126      JESUS    CHRIST    AND    CIVILIZATION    OF    TO-DAY 

peace  of  the  presence  of  the  perfect  in  life.  To  love 
the  perfect  is  to  feel  and  confess  our  own  imperfec- 
tions. But  to  love  the  perfect  is  to  possess  the  per- 
fect and  to  be  healed  and  strengthened  by  it.  Hence 
to  worship  a  Divine  Holiness  is  at  once  to  confess 
our  own  sinfulness  and  to  possess  a  goodness  that 
we  did  not  achieve  except  as  we  have  adored  it.  To 
love  God  because  He  is  the  All- Perfect  One  is  to 
commune  with  Him  through  that  love  which  lifts 
us  above  the  actual  or  possible  attainments  of  our 
wills  and  makes  us  actually  one  with  Him. 

Yes,  the  soul  of  man  is  infinite  in  its  demands! 
No  deluge  of  pleasures  and  riches  and  earthly  honours 
will  satisfy  these  demands.  The  soul  of  man  is 
infinite  in  aspiration  and  no  accumulation  of  scientific 
facts  and  laws,  no  outwardly  successful  round  of 
conformity  to  moral  laws,  will  satisfy  that  aspiration. 
The  spirit  must  pass  beyond  fact  and  law  discovered 
and  duty  fulfilled  to  love  and  adoration  of  a  living 
Perjection,  of  perfect  love  revealed  in  a  life.  Here 
it  is  that  science  and  morals  (in  the  ordinary  sense  of 
conformity  to  the  formulated  laws  of  right)  reach 
their  term.  Here  it  is  that  the  spirit  of  man  finds 
forgiveness  and  rest,  realization  of  aspiration,  the 
direct  possession  of  the  Perfect  as  Truth  and  Love 
in  the  vision  of  an  Infinite  Person,  i.e.  of  a  life  which 
is  the  unity  of  perfect  goodness  and  perfect  wisdom. 

And  this  perfect  Hf  e,  the  infinite  Wisdom  and  Love 
whom  the  human  spirit  seeks,  is  the  background  of 
Jesus'  whole  life  and  teaching. 


THE    IMPERFECTIONS    OF    LIFE  12  7 

But  there  is  another  aspect  of  the  problem  of  life 
and  its  present  imperfections.  The  vision  of  the 
perfect  is  not  always  with  the  soul,  and  when  it 
comes,  it  stirs  us  anew  and  strengthens  us  to  further 
endeavour  in  the  ethical  life.  This  vision  inspires 
men  to  attain  a  greater  self-control,  a  better  direc- 
tion of  the  lower  nature  by  the  higher,  and  a  fuller 
harmony  between  right  aspiration  and  the  prevail- 
ing habits  of  action.  The  vision  of  Divine  Perfec- 
tion points  and  stirs  men  on  in  the  work  of  making 
goodness  a  second  nature ^  i.e.  a  habit  of  their  being. 
In  other  words,  their  vision  stimulates  to  moral 
progress  which  men  do  indeed  achieve  though  slowly. 
And  what  is  the  end  or  goal  thereof?  Surely  at 
least  an  ever  closer  approximation  to  a  state  in  which 
our  feeling  and  our  action  shall  be  in  perfect  unison 
with  the  goodness  and  love  embodied  in  the  vision 
of  God,  in  which  the  spirit  of  man  shall  live  no 
longer  in  discordance  but  in  harmony  with  his  fel- 
lows, no  longer  having  fitful  gleams  of  God's  per- 
fection but  seeing  Him  more  nearly  as  He  is. 

And  this  ethical  or  spiritual  progress  implies  the 
immortahty  of  man's  spirit.  Not  only  must  the  spirit 
continue  to  exist  in  order  that  its  ethical  progress 
may  go  on,  but  it  must  exist  eternally  so  that  no  spir- 
itual achievement  may  be  lost.  For  there  is  no  mean- 
ing in  a  goodness,  perfection,  love,  which  is  not  an 
attribute  or  quality  of  a  living  person  or  spirit.  Un- 
less my  own  moral  individuality  is  conserved,  what- 
ever moral  quality  I  attain  and  possess,  whatever 


128      JESUS   CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

reverence  for  truth  and  justice,  whatever  life  of  love 
and  fellowship,  those,  it  would  seem,  are  surely 
lost  to  the  universe.  For  we  cannot,  in  the  ethical 
life,  regard  past  deeds  and  achievements  as  having 
present  being  apart  from  the  spirit  or  will  from  which 
they  issued  and  whose  nature  they  at  once  expressed 
and  further  strengthened  and  developed,  or,  at 
least,  apart  from  their  continuing  influence  on  living 
spirits  now  inspired   by  contemplation   of  them/ 

*  George  Eliot's  noble  lines 

"  O  may  I  join  the  choir  invisible 
Of  those  immortal  dead,"  etc. 

are  expressive  of  a  genuinely  inspiring  and  fundamental  faith  in 
immortality.  No  one  who  has  earnestly  gone  to  the  spiritual  his- 
tory of  the  race  for  guidance  and  inspiration  at  the  hands  of  its 
great  spiritual  leaders  can  fail  to  appreciate  the  profound  value 
and  power  of  the  continuing  influence  by  which,  as  each  successive 
generation  of  men  runs  the  race  that  is  set  before  it,  its  members, 
facing  tasks  that  are  ever  old  and  yet  ever  new,  are  brought  farther 
and  farther  forward  on  the  path  of  spiritual  achievement  and  into 
the  ways  of  peace  and  insight,  by  communion  with  those  great 
ones  that  have  gone  before  and  that,  from  the  dawn  of  the  spiritual 
life,  have  overcome  passions,  subdued  mysteries,  and  banished 
fears,  so  that  their  successors  might  live  more  cleanly,  strongly, 
gladly,  and  peacefully.  But  does  not  the  inspiring  quality  of  this 
faith  in  the  immortality  of  the  good  in  human  history  and  in  the 
racial  communion  of  saints  presuppose  a  larger  and  more  primal 
faith,  viz.  the  faith  that  the  race  of  man  in  its  spiritual  endeavours, 
achievements,  insights,  and  joys,  is  one  because  it  eternally 
rests  on  a  supreme  cosmic  spiritual  life?  Is  not  faith  in  the 
moral  continuity  and  spiritual  solidarity  of  the  race,  regarded  as 
immortal,  grounded  on  the  latent  faith  in  one  Universal  and 
Eternal  Spiritual  Life  that  is  ever  manifesting  and  realizing  itself  in 
the  spiritual  ongoing  of  the  race  ?  And  does  not  this  social  per- 
sistence of  the  spirit  involve  a  persistent  element  in  the  individual  ? 


THE   IMPERFECTIONS    OF   LIFE  1 29 

The  feeling  of  the  in-finite  worth  and  destiny  of  the 
human  spirit  in  the  recognition  of  its  vocation  to 
realize  and  be  a  free  and  rational  personality,  living 
in  relations  of  love  and  communion  with  other  per- 
sons, involves  as  a  necessary  postulate  the  immor- 
tality of  the  ethical  v^ill  in  the  individual.  The 
doctrine  of  immortality  is  hence  a  corollary,  not  a 
premise  of  the  ethical  life.  And  in  Jesus'  teaching 
it  is  a  consequent,  not  an  antecedent,  of  the  spiritual 
attitude  which  he  inculcates  and  to  which  his  life 
was  the  witness.  It  is  because  the  soul  has  supreme 
value  that  it  must  be  immortal.  "Ye  are  of  more 
value  than  many  sparrows"  (Matt.  10:31).  "If  a 
son  shall  ask  bread  of  any  of  you  that  is  a  father,  will 
he  give  him  a  stone?"  etc.  (Luke  11 :  11). 

It  is  because  the  personal  life  of  love  is  the  life  of 
supreme  worth  for  man  that  it  is  held  to  be  eternal. 
Certainly  in  respect  to  goodness  and  the  immortality 
of  the  good  will  the  judgments  of  the  Christian  or 
disciple  of  Jesus,  are,  as  has  often  been  said,  judg- 
ments of  worth  or  value  in  distinction  from  judgments 
of  bare  unspiritual  fact.  That  there  is  a  lake  seen 
through  my  window  as  I  write,  is  a  judgment  of 
mere  fact,  which  at  the  present  moment  has  no  bear- 
ing on  or  relation  to  my  own  aims  and  ideals  as  a 

Spirit  is  person  and  person  is  spirit.  Every  separate  individual 
who  enters  into  his  spiritual  heritage  by  meeting  his  moral  obliga- 
tions and  facing  the  issues  of  life  must  be  an  integral  element  in 
the  immortal  life  of  the  race  that  is  ever  conserved  and  yet  ever 
growing,  and  his  being  must  be  grounded  on  that  universal  and 
eternal  life  which  manifests  and  fulfils  itself  in  the  race. 


130      JESUS   CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

moral  being  or  spiritual  person.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  fact  that  I  have  certain  strong  passions  of  love, 
ambition,  intellectual  interests,  etc.,  involves  judg- 
ments of  fact  that  obviously  do  bear  strongly  on  my 
moral  nature.  And  if,  for  example,  it  were  estab- 
lished as  a  fact,  verifiable  by  any  reasoning  being, 
that  the  mind  and  will  of  man  is  a  merely  transient 
by-product  of  his  bodily  organism  and  that,  conse- 
quently, there  is  nothing  in  the  spirit  of  man  that 
could  possibly  survive  the  dissolution  of  his  present 
body,  personal  immortality  or  the  conservation  of 
spirit  in  any  sense  would  be  a  delusion,  and  judgments 
of  value,  viz.  as  to  the  enduring  worth  and  meaning 
of  the  life  of  righteousness  and  love,  of  justice  and 
peace,  would  be  without  adequate  foundation  in  the 
nature  of  the  universe.  The  entire  moral  and  spir- 
itual life  would  be  in  such  case  a  homeless  waif  in 
the  cosmos. 

In  the  absence  of  any  such  conflicting  proof  of  fact, 
our  immediate  convictions  as  to  the  supreme  worth 
and  meaning  of  justice,  honesty,  integrity,  love,  and 
peace,  and  as  to  the  supreme  worth  of  the  living  per- 
sonality, of  which  these  abstract  spiritual  quahties 
are  expressions,  lead  us  to  the  judgment  that  this 
spiritual  life  of  personality  must  be  enduring,  that 
it  must  be  founded  on  the  nature  of  things.  Such 
is  the  meaning  of  saying  that  faith  in  immortality 
rests  on  a  judgment  of  value.  Indeed  this  faith  is 
the  instinctive  expression  of  man's  ultimate  or  most 
final  judgment  of  value,  i.e.  of  the  supreme  meaning 


THE    IMPERFECTIONS    OF    LIFE  131 

of  that  principle  within  himself  which  because  it 
seeks  justice,  truth,  and  love,  he  feels  with  an  im- 
mediate conviction  to  be  the  highest  reality  in  the 
world. 

Now,  on  the  other  hand,  the  establishment  as  a 
verifiable  fact,  if  such  were  possible,  of  the  continued 
existence  of  conscious  beings  after  death  through 
their  communication  with  the  living,  need  have  no 
moral  value,  no  spiritual  significance  whatsoever. 
If  this  continued  existence  were  a  ghostly  or  even 
sensuous  state  involving  no  further  scope  for  moral 
achievement,  for  spiritual  insight,  no  efflorescence 
in  the  wider,  richer  realms  of  truth,  beauty,  and 
love,  of  that  life  which  at  best  seems  to  have  only  its 
crude  beginnings  now  on  earth,  then  the  fact  of 
continued  existence  would  be  devoid  of  spiritual 
significance.  Instead  of  comforting  and  inspiring 
the  best  spirits  with  the  resolve  "  to  speed  on,  fight 
on,  fare  ever,"  it  would  chill  them  with  despair  at 
the  triviality  and  insignificance,  yes !  the  mocking 
meaninglessness,  of  the  issues  of  the  human  life. 

I  do  not  say  that  psychical  research,  so-called, 
may  not  sometime  have  light  to  throw  on  the  spir- 
itual meaning  of  existence.  I  wish  only  to  insist  that 
belief  in  some  kind  of  ghostly  or  sentient  continuance 
of  existence,  and  in  an  immortal  life  radiant  with 
fuller  spiritual  insight  and  quickened  with  larger 
scope  for  achievement  and  love,  are  separated  by 
the  whole  diameter  of  being. 

The  realm  into  which  Christ  introduces  us  and 


132      JESUS   CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

in  which,  under  his  leadership,  we  grow  is  that  of 
the  supreme  ethical  and  spiritual  values.  It  is  the 
realm  of  social  justice,  of  intellectual  integrity,  of 
peace  and  love  and  joy  "in  widest  commonalty 
spread."  This  is  not  a  realm  of  brute  fact  and  phys- 
ical existence.  The  world  of  spiritual  values  and 
experiences  is  of  another  order  than  the  world  of 
body,  and  no  facts  in  regard  to  the  latter  order  are 
conclusive  in  regard  to  the  possibiHties  of  the  former 
order. 

It  can  only  be  because  of  our  immediate  expe- 
riences or  judgments  of  the  supreme  worth  of  the  life 
of  spiritual  personality  that  we  have  a  vital  faith  in 
the  immortahty  of  the  individual  spirit.  It  would 
require  a  treatise  on  philosophy  fully  to  demonstrate 
the  dependence  of  truth  in  natural  science  and  in 
all  departments  of  knowledge,  as  well  as  the  depend- 
ence of  the  moral  and  rehgious  life,  on  the  faith  in 
the  supreme  worth  and  reahty  of  the  personal  life 
or  will.  It  must  suffice  here  to  call  attention  to  the 
principle  that  without  the  moving  power  of  this  con- 
viction of  the  inherent  value  of  a  rational  spirit,  the 
search  for  and  possession  of  truth  as  well  as  of  good- 
ness and  beauty  would  be  unmeaning.  All  these 
inherently  worthful  possessions  are  creations  of  a 
spirit  which  seeks  to  satisfy  its  demands  for  fuller 
being  through  them. 

In  truth  all  our  fundamental  attitudes  of  thought 
and  action  are  judgments  of  value  or  worthy  i.e. 
expressions  of  what  shall  prevail  for  us  —  falsehood 


THE    IMPERFECTIONS    OF    LIFE  1 33 

or  truth;  hate  or  love;  discord  or  harmony;  God 
or  evil.  These  judgments  are  the  deepest  expres- 
sions of  the  inward  personaHty;  and  the  authority 
of  a  person,  in  this  case  the  authority  of  the  person- 
aHty of  Jesus  for  us,  is  the  authority  of  certain  judg- 
ments of  worth.  If  we  accept  his  judgments  of 
worth,  we  should  accept  his  person  as  normative  for 
our  Hves,  and  this  personal  life  under  the  leadership 
of  Jesus  will  have  for  its  necessary  consequence  the 
faith  in  the  eternal  quality  of  the  life  of  the  spirit 
in  the  individual. 

Although  Jesus  himself  refrains  from  saying  any- 
thing definite  in  regard  to  the  precise  character  and 
conditions  of  the  life  after  death  except  in  the  single 
instance  where  he  characterizes  it  in  negative  terms, 
viz.  "they  neither  marry  nor  are  given  in  marriage," 
the*  faith  in  individual  immortaHty  and  the  resur- 
rection from  the  dead  into  a  life  eternal  and  blessed 
constitute  an  integral  part  of  his  teaching.  His 
sayings  in  regard  to  the  perfect  coming  of  the  king- 
dom, and  in  regard  to  future  judgment  and  reward, 
always  involve  this  faith.  See  especially  Matt.  5 : 
29  ff.,  22:30,  25:34;  Mark  10:17,  12:25;  Luke 
20 :  35-36.  In  the  last  passage  we  are  told  the  hfe 
eternal  is  the  full  entrance  upon  Divine  Sonship: 
*'And  are  sons  of  God,  being  sons  of  the  resurrec- 
tion.'^  And  his  doctrine  of  immortality  is  always  con- 
ceived and  presented  in  ethical  or  spiritual  terms.  The 
doctrine  of  individual  immortality  rests  with  him  on 
the  more  primary  and  comprehensive  doctrine  of 


134      JESUS    CHRIST    AND    CIVILIZATION    OF   TO-DAY 

the  absolute  cosmic  supremacy  of  the  moral  and 
spiritual  order.  Resurrection  and  eternal  life  are 
the  consequences  of  the  allegiance  manifested  by 
the  individual  to  spiritual  values.  It  is  he  who  has 
faith  in  and  practises  righteousness  and  love,  he  who 
gives  a  cup  of  cold  water  in  His  name,  he  who  feeds 
the  hungry,  clothes  the  naked,  and  visits  those  who 
are  sick  and  in  prison,  he  who  is  loyal  to  the  principles 
of  righteousness  and  love  as  taught  by  the  Master, 
who  enters  into  the  great  reward.  Compare  the 
wonderfully  beautiful  and  simple  passage  on  eternal 
life,  Matt.  25 :  31-46. 

The  eternal  life  begins  here  and  now  for  him  who 
accepts  and  affirms  these  spiritual  values.  Immor- 
tality is  not  a  state  to  be  extraneously  tacked  on  to 
the  present  one.  "The  kingdom  of  God  is  within 
you"  (Luke  17 :  21). 

Jesus'  fundamental  principle  in  this  regard  is 
the  continuity  0}  the  moral  and  spiritual  life  now 
and  hereafter.  The  future  life  whether  good  or  evil, 
whether  in  the  completed  Kingdom  of  Heaven  or 
in  Gehenna,  the  realm  of  punishment,  grows  out 
of  the  present  life.  Since  the  individual  is  now  a 
participant  in  the  spiritual  issues  of  the  world,  so 
he  must  continue  to  be  in  the  time  to  come.  The 
fundamental  teaching  of  Jesus  is  that  the  spiritual 
qualities  of  integrity  in  mind  and  heart,  of  loyalty 
to  the  good,  of  fellowship  and  service,  of  humble 
aspiration  after  and  love  for  the  Divine  Goodness, 
are  enduring  and  wall  be  supreme  and  triumphant 


THE   IMPERFECTIONS   OF   LIFE  135 

in  the  universe.  These  qualities  multiply  and  pre- 
vail in  the  world  in  part  through  their  affirmation 
by  individual  wills  and  their  rule  in  the  hearts  of 
individuals.  And  the  wills  and  hearts  in  which  these 
quahties  rule  have  already  entered  into  eternal  Hfe. 
Hence  the  faith  in  immortaHty,  in  the  resurrection 
and  the  future  triumph  of  the  good  and  subjection 
of  the  evil,  is  a  consequence  of  the  more  primary  and 
fundamental  faith  in  the  supremacy  of  the  spirit. 
Jesus  teaches  the  continuance  of  the  individual  life 
as  a  consequence  that  flows  from  the  conviction  that 
the  moral  drama  of  life  and  of  history  will  have  a 
triumphant  issue  in  the  final  and  everlasting  rule  of 
the  good  and  that,  hence,  the  spirits  of  those  who 
have  affirmed  the  good  and  so  cooperated  with 
God  —  the  Supremely  Good  —  must  endure  and 
enjoy  the  fruition  of  their  labours  in  His  perfected 
rule. 

The  obverse  of  this  belief  in  the  eternal  reward  of 
righteousness  is  the  punishment  of  the  souls  of  those 
who  have  persistently  chosen  and  wrought  for  evil 
(Matt.  5  :  29  f.,  10  :  28 ;  Mark  9  :  43,  45,  47  f.).  The 
spiritual  torment  of  the  wicked  (Luke  12  15),  like 
the  spiritual  joy  of  the  righteous,  is  generally  pre- 
sented in  the  gospels,  in  harmony  with  Jewish 
traditional  views,  as  everlasting.  This  doctrine,  how- 
ever, is  not  stressed  and  there  are  occasional  indica- 
tions of  a  belief  in  a  finite  term  of  punishment  and 
of  the  possibility  of  moral  change  in  the  intermediate 
state.    Some  are  beaten   with  jew  stripes   (Luke 


136      JESUS    CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

12:46-48).  The  possibility  of  forgiveness  in  the 
next  life  seems  to  be  implied  in  the  statement  that 
of  only  one  sin,  viz.  that  against  the  Holy  Ghost, 
is  it  true  that  "neither  in  this  world,  nor  in  that  which 
is  to  come"  canit  beforgiven  (Matt.  12  :  32).  Charles, 
art.  "Eschatology,"  in  Encyclopedia  Biblica,  suggests 
that  the  appeal  of  the  rich  man  in  Hades  to  Abra- 
ham is  a  sign  of  belief  in  the  possibiHty  of  moral 
growth  after  death.  However  repugnant  the  notion 
of  future  punishment  may  be  to  the  minds  of  this 
generation,  the  belief  in  a  moral  order  of  the  imiverse 
surely  implies  that  the  reality  of  wrong-doing  involves 
the  reality  of  injury  and  suffering  to  the  soul.  Let 
retribution  be  conceived  in  purely  spiritual  terms,  it 
is  not  thereby  eliminated.  Sin  and  loss  of  spiritual 
integrity,  moral  suffering  and  atrophy,  remain 
realities  none  the  less ;  indeed  much  more,  that  their 
consequences  are  spiritual  and  deep  graven  in  the 
soul  and  not  administered  by  way  of  physical  tor- 
ments. Mark  9 :  42  ff.  is  conclusive  evidence  that  the 
punishment  is  spiritual.  He  who  may  be  repelled 
by  the  words  attributed  to  Jesus  on  this  point  is 
reminded,  in  the  first  place,  of  the  great  part  which 
the  idea  of  retribution  plays  in  the  evolution  of  mor- 
ality and  of  the  tendency  of  the  earlier  and  cruder 
forms  of  moral  development  to  survive  and  intrude 
themselves  at  higher  levels,  and,  as  well,  of  the  great 
pedagogical  value  of  this  idea  now  as  always.  Jesus 
speaks  to  awaken  his  hearers  to  the  serious  issues  of 
life.    The  sayings  that  imply  everlasting  punishment 


THE  IMPERFECTIONS    OF   LIFE  137 

may  be  regarded  either  as  instances  in  which,  in 
order  to  awaken  men's  thoughts  to  the  issues  of  Hfe, 
he  spoke  to  them  of  the  great  alternatives  of  the  will 
in  the  terms  and  imagery  current  in  his  own  age  and 
among  his  own  people,  and  hence  best  fitted  to  arouse 
them  to  a  moral  searching  of  heart ;  or  these  sayings 
may  be  regarded  as  instances  in  which  the  gospel 
writers  have  insensibly  coloured,  with  the  traditional 
current  ideas  in  which  their  minds  were  steeped 
and  from  which  they  are  not  yet  wholly  free, 
original  sayings  in  which  the  Master  spoke  only 
of  the  tremendous  present  and  future  conse- 
quences of  choice  in  the  moral  and  spiritual  realm. 
My  own  view  is  that  Jesus  meant  to  convey  to  his 
hearers'  minds  the  possibility  of  spiritual  self-destruc- 
tion. Only  in  the  kingdom  is  there  life.  Far  more 
deep-going  and  significant  than  the  precise  meaning 
of  his  occasional  utterances  on  these  points  is  the 
teaching  of  Jesus  Christ  as  to  God's  infinite  love  and 
unwearying  patience.  This  is  the  substance  of  his 
teaching  and  need  be  in  no  way  seriously  affected 
by  one's  interpretation  of  the  origin  and  meaning  of 
the  sayings  as  to  the  future  punishment. 

He  who  accepts  Jesus'  principles  of  life,  and  labours 
in  aspiration  and  endeavour  to  reahze  these  prin- 
ciples, may  well  refrain  from  vain  and  profitless 
speculations  in  regard  to  the  precise  nature  of 
the  future  state.  Such  an  one  may  well,  without  fear 
or  despair,  recognize  the  mysteries  and  hopeless 
puzzles  that  encompass  any  attempt  to  determine 


138      JESUS    CHRIST    AND    CIVILIZATION    OF    TO-DAY 

in  what  sense,  if  any,  the  memory  of  personal  iden- 
tity may  continue.  He  may  well  be  content  with 
the  faith  that  no  moral  and  spiritual  achievement 
will  be  lost,  that  what  is  worthy  to  endure  will  endure, 
and  that,  so  far  as  the  individual  participates  in  the 
spirit  of  the  Master  by  aspiration,  resolve,  and 
deed,  his  Hfe  is  eternal.  All  further  questions  as 
to  the  shape  the  future  life  may  take,  as  to  the  range 
of  future  possibiHties  open  to  the  individual,  or  as 
to  what  individuality  may  mean  hereafter,  he  will 
leave  aside,  waiting  serenely  for  the  day  when  he 
may  "see  face  to  face"  and  know  as  he  is  known. 
Sufficient  will  be  the  faith  that  honesty,  truth,  loy- 
alty, justice,  love,  as  quaHties  of  the  personal  spirit 
must  somehow  endure. 


CHAPTER   VII 

THE   IDEA   OF   GOD 

(i)    The  Idea  of  God  in  General 

The  idea  of  God  or  of  the  ultimate  Reality  is  not 
merely  the  supreme  notion  of  the  human  reason.  This 
notion  is  also  of  the  utmost  practical  importance  for 
the  hfe  of  man.  No  serious,  thinking  man  is  devoid 
of  some  conception  of  the  ultimate  reaHty  of  the 
universe  and  of  some  conviction,  formulated  or  in- 
stinctive, of  his  own  relation  to  that  reality.  Any 
man  who  thinks  at  all  must  recognize  his  dependence 
on  some  universal  principle  of  being.  He  may  re- 
gard the  ultimate  reality  simply  as  the  sum-total  or 
unity  of  the  visible  universe,  as  "an  Infinite  and 
Eternal  Energy  from  which  all  things  proceed;" 
he  may  say  the  world  is  ruled  by  an  inscrutable  Fate ; 
he  may  try  to  conceive  of  the  First  Principle  of  things 
as  a  Universal  Impersonal  Spirit ;  or  he  may  believe 
in  a  Personal  God.  But  in  every  case  he  feels  his 
dependence  on  and  the  vital  relation  of  his  life  to 
this  ultimate  unity.  And  in  the  deeper  moments 
of  his  inner  experience  a  man  will  adore  or  contem- 
plate with  exaltation  even  an  inscrutable  Fate,  a 
cosmic  Energy,  or  an  Impersonal  Reason.    In  such 

139 


I40     JESUS    CHRIST  AND  CIVILIZATION  OF  TO-DAY 

moments  the  barest  abstraction  of  thought  becomes 
clothed  by  human  feeling  with  quasi-personal  char- 
acter and  life.  The  human  heart  instinctively 
ascends  in  feeling  to  the  Supreme  Reality.  This 
ascent  appears  to  be  an  ineradicable  impulse  of  hu- 
man nature.  It  is  the  ascent  of  the  imperfect  to 
the  perfect,  the  flight  of  the  changing  and  temporal 
to  the  unchanging  and  eternal,  of  the  finite  individ- 
ual to  the  infinite  and  absolute.  And  this  impulse 
Godv^rard,  this  search  for  the  Perfect,  instinctive  and 
primal  though  it  be,  is  enlarged  and  refined  of  its 
grosser  elements  with  the  growth  of  human  thought. 
Science  and  Philosophy  do  not  banish  it.  They 
only  transform  and  purify  the  notion  of  God. 

Let  us  briefly  consider,  before  taking  account  of 
Jesus'  contribution  to  the  idea  of  God,  in  what  direc- 
tion and  how  far  scientific  and  philosophic  reflection 
will  carry  us.  Let  us  inquire  how  far  the  human 
instinct  for  God  seems  to  have  a  legitimate  basis  in 
thought.  I  do  not  propose  to  give  here  an  elaborate 
disquisition  on  the  philosophical  idea  of  God  or  to 
discuss  in  detail  the  various  historical  arguments  for 
the  Divine  ReaHty.  I  propose  to  sketch  very  briefly 
what  I  conceive  to  be  the  philosophical  foundation 
of  the  notion  of  God  in  order  that  we  may  be  able 
to  see  the  more  clearly  what  is  the  relation  of  Jesus' 
teaching  to  this  notion  and  why  his  contribution 
has  a  distinctively  ethical  and  spiritual  character.^ 

*  I  beg  leave  to  refer  the  reader  for  a  critical  and  metaphysical 
discussion  of  the  idea  of  God  to  my  Typical  Modern  Conceptions 


THE   IDEA   OF    GOD  141 

The  whole  development  of  science  points  toward 
the  unity  of  the  universe.  For  early  man  the  world 
was  chaotic  and  fragmentary  just  as  his  own  social 
and  individual  activity  was  devoid  of  system  and 
order.  But  the  growth  in  human  control  of  nature 
and  in  the  stable  organization  of  society  have  gone 
hand  in  hand  with  the  discovery  of  order  in  the  uni- 
verse. Science  proceeds  upon  the  assumption, 
which  is  triumphantly  verified  more  fully  from  day 
to  day,  that  the  universe  is  a  whole  of  interrelated 
parts.  And  the  laws  of  nature,  in  Physics,  Chem- 
istry, and  Biology,  are  the  general  principles  of  these 
interrelations.  We  do  not  indeed  yet  know  what 
is  the  relation  of  every  bit  of  matter  or  every  living 
thing  or  every  change  that  takes  place  in  things  to 
the  world  as  a  whole,  and,  consequently,  we  cannot 
say  completely  in  detail  just  how  the  physical  or 
empirical  world  is  one.  But  that  all  parts  of  the 
world-order  are  bound  together  in  one  system  of 
relations,  and  that  in  this  order  nothing  happens 
in  one  part  or  element  without  corresponding  changes 
in  the  other  things  closely  related  to  it,  the  progress 

of  God  (Longmans,  Green  &  Co.,  1901)  and  the  concluding  chap- 
ters of  my  Personality  and  Reality  (in  preparation). 

The  reader  who  is  interested  in  the  philosophical  foundations 
of  the  doctrine  of  God  is  further  referred  to  Josiah  Royce  and 
others,  The  Conception  of  God,  and  to  Royce's  The  World  and  tJie 
Individual;  James  Ward,  Naturalism  and  Agnosticism,  vol.  ii. 
part  v.;  James  Martineau,  A  Study  of  Religion;  E.  Caird,  The 
Evolution  of  Religion;  and  in  German  to  R.  Eucken's  Der 
Wahrheitsgehalt  der  Religion;  G.  Class,  Die  Realitdt  der  Gottes- 
idee,  and  H.  Siebeck's  Lehrhuch  der  Religions philosophie. 


142       JESUS    CHRIST    AND    CIVILIZATION    OF   TO-DAY 

of  scientific  discovery  entitles  us  to  assume.  Every- 
where we  find  that  the  jacts  which  are  given  to  us  in 
our  experience  are  held  together  by  relations.  And 
these  relations  of  facts  to  one  another,  these  inter- 
dependencies  of  things  in  the  natural  order  on  one 
another's  occurrences  and  activities,  we  express  in 
our  scientific  laws.  When  we  say  that  bodies  in 
space  attract  one  another  inversely  as  the  square  of 
the  distance,  or  that  bodies  fall  to  the  earth  with  a 
uniform  acceleration  of  9.8  metres  per  second,  we 
are  formulating  relationships.  These  laws  are  the 
expressions  of  the  unity  of  the  universe.  When  we 
say  that  those  organisms  survive  and  multiply  which 
develop  organs  or  functions  that  enable  them  the 
better  to  obtain  food  in  a  given  environment  and  to 
protect  themselves  against  enemies,  we  are  again 
expressing  the  unity  that  obtains  between  the  living 
organisms  and  their  physical  environment.  And 
by  a  consideration  of  the  progress  that  is  constantly 
being  made  toward  more  comprehensive  and  more 
deep-reaching  interpretations  of  the  interrelations 
of  things  in  the  natural  order  we  arrive  at  the  notion 
that  the  universe  is  one,  that  the  world  which  pre- 
sents itself  in  perception  as  a  multitudinous  variety 
of  things,  beings,  and  qualities,  more  or  less  in  ap- 
parent confusion  and  opposition,  is  in  reality  held 
together  by  one  universal  principle. 

When  we  reflect  more  deeply  on  the  nature  of  this 
unity  in  the  universe  we  are  carried  farther.     The     \y 
unity  of  the  universe  exists  for  thought.     It  is  a 


THE    IDEA    OF    GOD  1 43 

known  unity  —  a  unity  for  human  consciousness. 
Our  conviction  in  regard  to  its  reality  grows  as  thought 
grows  in  the  mastery  of  its  materials  of  knowledge. 
But  these  materials,  or  data  of  thinking,  a  simple 
reflection  reveals  to  be  in  the  last  resort  matters  oj 
human  experience.  We  know  no  world  apart  jrom 
human  experience.  Whatever  conception  of  the 
world  one  may  frame  is  derived  finally  from  human 
perception.  The  unity  of  my  world  is  a  unity  in  and 
for  my  consciousness  —  a  unity  which  grows  out  of 
my  reflections  on  experience.  And  the  case  is  pre- 
cisely similar  with  your  world  and  your  experience. 
You  and  I  each  must  find  law,  order,  interrelation, 
in  the  facts  of  his  own  perceptual  experience  if  the 
world  is  to  be  rationally  one  for  us  —  if  it  is  to  be 
a  world  in  which  we  can  make  plans  for  the  future 
—  go  to  sleep  expecting  to  work  to-morrow  while 
it  is  day  or  sow  our  seed  in  the  autumn  expecting  to 
reap  a  harvest  the  following  summer.  We  could 
make  no  rational  provision  for  the  future  —  we  could 
not  live  even  as  the  beasts  that  perish  —  without  the 
assumption  of  some  sort  of  unity  and  uniformity 
in  the  universe. 

Now  you  and  I  agree  that  we  live  in  and  experi- 
ence the  same  world.  It  is  perhaps  not  strictly  true 
that  we  do  experience  in  our  individual  perceptions 
an  absolutely  identical  world,  and  certainly  the  world 
as  it  is  thought  varies  very  much  from  man  to  man. 
But  the  differences  between  our  worlds  are  negligible. 
We  are  members  of  the  same  human  family,  the  same 


144      JESUS    CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

stage  of  civilized  society,  and  we  live  under  much 
the  same  general  conditions  of  existence.  We  as- 
sume then  that  we  perceive  and  know  the  same 
world.  We  cooperate  in  this  world  in  order  that 
we  both  may  live,  rear  our  families,  have  joy  in  life, 
achieve  things  in  this  common  world  in  which  we 
meet  as  members  of  human  society.  This  common 
universe  then  is  for  us  the  basis  of  our  social  relations 
on  which  our  weal  and  woe  so  completely  depend.  We 
perceive  and  think,  we  cooperate  and  carry  out  our 
purposes,  we  realize  our  lives'  ends  in  the  same  world. 
Now,  since  for  each  one  of  us  the  world  which  we 
know  as  a  unity  is  a  world  experienced  and  thought 
or  reflected  on,  sl  world  which  is  built  up  out  of  the 
materials  of  our  own  perceptions,  since,  in  other 
words,  the  world  as  a  unity  has  no  meaning  apart 
from  human  experience  and  reflection,  if  there  really 
be  a  common  world  for  you  and  me  to  know  and  to 
commune  and  cooperate  in,  its  unity  must  be  that 
supplied  or  constituted  by  a  unitary  experience  and 
thought,  i.e.  by  a  universal  world-consciousness, 
A  world-unity  absolutely  independent  of  and  un- 
related to  any  experience  or  any  thinking  conscious- 
ness is  unintelHgible.  For  you  and  me  to  find  unity 
and  rational  order  in  our  experiences,  for  us  to  meet 
on  common  ground  and  live  in  social  relations,  is 
to  find  ourselves  and  our  experiences  dependent  on 
an  ultimate  and  intelligible  unity.  What  we  mean 
by  the  "world"  is  a  socially  recognized  basis  of  com- 
mon experience,  a  universal  experience  which  ren- 


THE   IDEA   OF   GOD  I45 

ders  intelligible  the  thought  of  a  common  world. 
On  the  basis  of  their  common  experience  men,  by 
cooperative  thinking,  have  steadily  progressed  in 
the  discovery  of  reason  or  order  in  the  vi^orld  as  a 
whole.  Hence  the  world-order  as  a  whole  must 
be  dependent  on  an  intelHgible  experience.  When 
man  discovers  order  in  the  world-whole,  he  is  dis- 
covering its  dependence  on  a  mind  somehow  akin 
to  his  own.  In  science  the  human  reason  interrogates 
the  outer  world  and  receives  an  answer  in  terms  of 
reason,  and  this  answer  is  mind  speaking  to  mind 
across  the  deeps  of  the  physical  world.  In  finding 
order  in  nature  the  mind  of  man  is  finding  the  Di- 
vine Reason. 

Thus  we  have  a  philosophical  conception  of  God 
involved  in  the  most  elementary  recognition  of  a 
world.  The  progressive  unification  of  knowledge 
in  man  is  inconceivable  unless  there  be  a  unitary 
inteUigence  as  the  basis  of  a  world.  More  specifi- 
cally, man's  knowledge  of  the  physical  world  as 
one  or  as  a  system  of  interrelated  parts,  existing 
and  moving  in  an  orderly  manner,  would  be  impos- 
sible without  his  social  life.  It  has  been  through 
intercommunication,  cooperation,  and  the  trans- 
mission of  experience  and  its  interpretations  from 
age  to  age  that  mankind  has  gradually  arrived  at 
the  notion  of  one  universe  of  law  or  order.  The 
most  rudimentary  social  life  or  cooperation  and  com- 
munion of  man  with  man  involves  this  recognition  of 

L 


^ 


146      JESUS    CHRIST    AND    CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

a  common  world.  Moreover,  through  the  growth 
of  human  society  in  stability  and  organization  which 
in  turn  brings  and  involves  increasing  mastery  over 
nature,  and  through  that  conception  of  law  or  order 
in  events  and  actions  which  has  grown  out  of  the 
very  submission  0}  the  individuates  impulses  to  social 
custom  and  law,  there  arises  the  notion  of  a  like  order 
or  law  in  the  physical  world. 

The  unitary  intelligence  or  universal  self-conscious- 
ness is,  then,  conceived  as  the  common  source  and 
ground  of  order  in  nature  and  of  order  in  human 
society.  And,  since  it  is  the  work  of  society  to  sub- 
ordinate nature  to  human  ends  and  so  to  further  the 
fuller  achievement  of  human  purposes,  the  unitary 
intelligence  who  is  the  universal  common  ground  of 
natural  order  and  social  order  must  be  conceived  as 
sustaining  and  furthering  somehow  in  a  systematic 
unity  of  life  and  action  the  most  comprehensive  ends 
or  purposes  of  human  society  and  of  the  individual 
life.  So  man's  highest  philosophical  conception  of 
God  is  teleological  and  social,  i.e.  God  is  conceived 
as  somehow  originating  and  directing  the  course  of 
the  whole  universe  in  harmony  vdth  the  highest 
interests  and  ends  of  social  humanity.  And  here 
we  reach  the  limits  of  philosophical  inquiry  in  this 
matter  and,  indeed,  find  ourselves  already  on  de- 
batable ground.  For  the  higher  we  rise  in  our  con- 
ception of  the  cosmic  intelligence  and  the  more 
closely  we  bring  our  conception  of  Him  into  harmony 
with  human  interest,  purpose,  and  destiny,  the  more 


THE   IDEA   OF   GOD  147 

vague  our  conception  becomes  and  the  more  difficult 
to  square  with  the  tangled  facts  of  experience.  For 
human  purposes  are  defeated  as  well  as  reaHzed. 
Human  life  and  ideals  sometimes  seem  to  be  the 
sport  of  blind  chance.  Even  the  spiritual  life  seems 
sadly  hindered  by  the  contingencies  of  the  natural 
order.  Physical  weakness  brings  grinding  poverty 
and  poverty  cramps  the  development  of  the  higher 
side  of  man's  life.  A  clot  on  the  brain  seems  to 
cause  the  total  ecHpse  of  a  bright  and  brave  spirit. 
The  inference  from  the  unity  of  the  universe  in  our 
experience  and  thought  to  the  unity  of  a  supreme 
intelHgence  is  perfectly  valid.  The  inference  to  an 
ethical  purpose  and  character  in  the  universal  con- 
sciousness or  mind  is  a  postulate  derived  from  and 
supported  by  the  unity  of  human  society  in  and  for 
which  the  world  exists  as  an  intelligible  universe. 
But  the  specific  and  definite  harmony  of  the  originat- 
ing and  sustaining  activity  of  the  Supreme  Mind 
with  the  higher  interests  and  aims  of  society  and, 
more  especially,  with  the  highest  life  of  the  individual 
seems  at  best  to  be  a  conception  having  only  a 
probable  value.  The  evolution  of  human  society 
and  its  achievements  in  science,  arts,  and  morals, 
point  toward  such  a  teleological  notion  of  God  as 
in  harmony  with  human  aims  and  as  sustaining  the 
historical  and  social  evolution  of  culture.  But  in 
the  last  resort,  the  beHef  in  such  a  harmony,  while  it 
has  a  rational  justification  in  the  facts  of  human 
evolution  in  knowledge  and  morals,  must  rest  in  a 


143      JESUS    CHRIST    AND    CIVILIZATION   OF    TO-DAY 

personal  deed  and  experience.  Theoretically  we  may 
legitimately  infer  the  existence  of  a  supreme  mind 
manifested  in  the  systematic  unity  of  the  natural 
order  and  revealed  more  fully  in  the  development  of 
man's  historical  and  social  life.  Practically  this 
inference  becomes  a  concrete  and  living  conviction 
or  reality  in  the  experience  of  the  individual  as  a  self- 
active  spiritual  being  who  realizes  his  higher  life  in 
society  through  the  successful  pursuit  of  ends  and 
in  obedience  to  ideals. 

There  remains  then  yet  one  other  consideration 
and  indeed,  to  the  ethical  spirit  of  man,  the  very 
strongest  consideration  of  all,  from  which  the  inference 
to  the  existence  of  a  Supreme  Holiness  and  Righteous- 
ness is  drawn.  This  is  the  argument  from  the  abso- 
lutely binding  force  of  a  moral  ideal,  the  sense  of 
an  unconditional  obHgation  to  think  and  do  right. 
For  the  man  in  whom  the  ethical  spirit  is  ahve  justice 
and  truth  represent  unconditional  obligations.  He 
must  and  will  act  as  if  they  must  prevail  in  the  world 
and  his  action  implies  the  belief  that  they  will  pre- 
vail. The  supreme  obligation  to  follow  after  truth 
and  justice  and  to  endeavour  to  make  these  ideals 
effective  in  human  society  rests  upon  the  faith  in  a 
moral  order  of  the  universe.  The  man  who  elects  to 
be  honest,  to  be  just,  to  seek  and  speak  truth  at  what- 
ever cost,  in  so  acting  postulates  the  supremacy  of 
these  ethical  principles  over  the  brute  facts  of  nature 
and  history.  But  in  the  last  analysis  all  moral 
qualities  inhere  in  persons.    There  is  nothing  un- 


THE   IDEA   OF   GOD  149 

conditionally  good  but  the  good  will  or  disposition 
of  an  individual  spirit.  All  so-called  "goods"  are  to 
be  tested  by  their  relation  to  human  character.  And 
in  a  final  analysis  all  social  principles  of  ethics 
refer  to  relations  between  persons  or  at  least  between 
sentient  beings.  We  may  owe  duties  to  animals,  but 
we  certainly  owe  none  to  brute  matter  or  energy. 

If  there  be  an  ultimate  moral  order  such  that  the 
good  does  or  will  in  the  end  prevail,  if  the  natural 
order  of  existence  is  subordinate  and  subservient  to 
the  moral  order,  this  order  in  turn  must  be  embodied 
in  a  Person.  If  justice  and  truth  prevail,  if  the  good 
triumph  finally  then,  since  moral  qualities  belong 
only  to  conscious  selves,  there  must  be  a  Supreme 
and  Righteous  Self  or  Person. 

Thus  from  a  consideration  of  what  is  involved  in 
the  unconditioned  obligations  to  truth  and  justice 
and  righteousness  we  are  led  necessarily  to  the  notion 
of  a  Personal  God,  not,  as  Kant  urged,  in  order  that 
virtue  and  happiness  may  be  made  to  coincide,  but 
that  virtue  or  moral  goodness  may  prevail  or  triumph 
and  endure.  And  if  we  feel  an  unconditioned  or 
inviolable  obhgation  to  serve  truth  and  justice, 
we  cannot  believe  that  these  principles  may  perish  or 
that  they  have  no  standing  in  the  real  universe. 

Of  course  the  force  of  this  argument  depends  on 
the  recognition  of  the  absolute  supremacy  of  moral 
principles.  He  for  whom  social  justice  or  indi- 
vidual righteousness  simply  means  the  greatest 
possible  pleasure,  or  for  whom  the  true  is  only  the 


150      JESUS    CHRIST   AND    CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

useful,  will  not  be  influenced  by  such  considerations. 
For  such  an  one  God  at  the  most  would  be  the 
dispenser  of  pleasures,  the  ruler  of  a  Mahommedan 
paradise  filled  with  houris  and  sweet  viands  where, 
to  use  Heine's  phrase,  roast  geese  flew  about  with 
gravy-boats  in  their  bills. 

(2)  Jesus^  Idea  oj  God 

Profound  convictions  as  to  man 's  destiny  and  place 
in  the  universe  and  as  to  God 's  nature  and  attitude 
toward  man  have  always  arisen  and  spread  in  the 
shape  of  facts  and  influences  in  the  historical-spirit- 
ual life  oj  man.  In  particular  the  ideas  of  God  which 
have  prevailed  in  and  powerfully  influenced  human 
culture  have  been  the  utterance  of  great  personali- 
ties not  only  in  word  but  in  deed.  By  living  and 
doing  rather  than  arguing  and  demonstrating  have 
Moses  and  Isaiah,  Mahomet  and  Luther,  profoundly 
influenced  men's  religious  convictions. 

And,  in  a  supreme  degree,  Jesus'  personal  attitude 
and  life  have  been  the  source  of  the  revolution  he  has 
wrought  in  men's  ideas  concerning  God  and  in  their 
vital  and  active  feelings  and  convictions  in  regard  to 
Him.  I  have  already  said  that  the  vital  conviction 
of  a  God  as  a  spiritual  being  standing  in  actual 
relation  to  the  spiritual  experiences  and  ethical  deeds 
of  the  individual  springs  from  the  innermost  depths 
of  the  human  personality.  This  conviction  is  the 
offspring  and  expression  of  the  heart  or  whole 
nature  oj  man.    Now  it  was  {and  it  is)  through  his 


THE   IDEA   OF   GOD  151 

influence  on  the  entire  personality,  on  the  heart  and 
will  of  the  individual  man,  that  Jesus  wrought  (and 
still  works)  his  revolution  in  men's  thought  in  re- 
gard to  God's  character  and  attitude  toward  man. 

Jesus  does  not  argue  and  does  not  demonstrate 
God's  being.  He  gives  no  proofs,  ontological, 
cosmological,  or  teleological,  of  God's  existence.  He 
assumes  that  there  exists  a  Supreme  Mind  or  Person, 
all-powerful,  all-knowing,  all-Holy.  He  assumes 
the  supreme  unity  of  Truth  and  Power  in  a  Divine 
InteUigence.  He  places  first,  as  the  supreme  attri- 
bute in  God,  the  governing  principle  in  His  relation 
to  man  —  Love.  Love  that  transcends,  and  uses  as 
its  instrument,  omnipotence  and  omniscience.  Love 
that  passes  beyond  mere  justice  and  righteousness, 
Love  infinite  in  patience  and  forgiveness  and  eternal 
in  well-doing,  Jesus  declares  to  be  the  heart  of  God. 
This  is  his  unique  and  unparalleled  contribution  to 
the  idea  of  God.  This  is  his  revolution  in  ethical 
theology.  The  doctrine  of  God  which  Jesus  offers 
is  absolutely  ethical  and  spiritual. 

Now  he  does  not  argue  men  into  accepting  this 
view  of  God.  He  does  not  demonstrate  logically 
that  it  must  be  true.  He  affirms  it  as  an  unshaken, 
sun-clear  intuition  of  God  which  he  himself  possesses 
in  absolute  measure.  The  word  "Father"  had  been 
appHed  to  God  before  Jesus  used  the  term.  But 
what  a  world  of  new  meaning  it  gets  in  Jesus'  mouth  ! 
How  without  argument  or  theological  disquisition  he 
revolutionized  men's  feelings  about  God  !    Through 


152      JESUS   CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

Jesus  men  feel  the  Father's  living  presence  and  are 
made  joyful  in  the  new-found  sense  of  God's  personal 
presence  and  interest  in  them  and  in  their  lives. 
"Your  heavenly  Father  knoweth  that  ye  have  need 
of  all  thesfe  things  "  (Matt.  6:32).  "  God  is  not  the 
God  of  the  dead,  but  of  the  living  "  (Matt.  22  132, 
Mark  12:27,  etc.).  "If  ye  then,  being  evil,  know 
how  to  give  good  gifts  unto  your  children,  how  much 
more  shall  your  Father  which  is  in  Heaven  give  good 
things  to  them  that  ask  Him?"  (Matt.  7:11,  etc.). 
No,  Jesus  offers  no  theoretical  demonstration  of 
God's  existence.  He  does  not  discourse  concerning 
God's  infinitude  or  finitude.  His  transcendency  or 
immanency.  His  substantiahty,  or  actuahty,  the 
creation  of  the  world  in  time  or  out  of  time,  etc. 
His  demonstration  of  God's  reality  and  nature  is 
the  challenge  and  appeal  of  a  perfect  ethical  or 
spiritual  personality  to  a  humanity  that  is  seeking 
the  highest.  Jesus'  notion  of  God  is  absolutely 
ethical  or  spiritual.  It  is  in  the  heart  of  man,  in  the 
innermost  citadel  of  the  affections,  in  the  central 
source  of  human  will  and  action,  in  the  concrete 
personal  spirit,  that  Jesus  works  a  transformation  in 
man's  sense  of  the  Divine  Reality.  And  he  works 
this  transformation  by  virtue  of  his  own  personal 
power,  by  the  total  impress  and  inspiration  of  a 
God-filled  human  character.  That  which  stands 
out  supreme  in  the  pages  of  the  gospel  is  the  God- 
penetrated  human  personality  of  the  master.  Jesus' 
life  was  his  contribution  to  man's  knowledge  of  God. 


THE  IDEA   OF   GOD  153 

His  whole  personality  was  the  source  of  the  transfor- 
mation he  wrought  in  men's  feelings  about  God  and 
this  transformation  was  preeminently  ethical.  It 
was  and  ever  is  an  inward  new  birth  and  a  redemp- 
tion in  which  the  twice-born  soul  is  an  active  partici- 
pant. 

For  Jesus  works  the  great  change  in  men's  hearts 
by  force  of  a  personal  appeal  which  challenges  men 
to  deeds,  to  new  resolves  and  choices.  He  calls  forth 
ever  renewed  ethical  endeavour  and  he  reveals  new 
reaches  of  spiritual  experience,  in  that  he  leads  men 
through  the  demands  of  ethical  justice  and  love  to 
communion  with  God.  The  effect  of  his  influence 
is  to  deepen  men's  sense  of  the  meaning  and  worth 
of  the  higher  personal  Hfe  in  all  humanity.  Faith 
in  God  becomes  simply  the  completer  experience  of 
the  eternal  basis  of  ethical  deeds  and  the  ground  of 
fresh  spiritual  aspiration.  Jesus  calls  men  to 
spiritual  deeds,  to  deeds  of  justice,  of  mercy,  of  love, 
to  a  devotion  in  which  the  lower  or  sensuous  life  of 
the  individual  is  merged  and  transformed  in  the 
service  of  a  spiritual  humanity.  Through  these 
spiritual  deeds  men's  experiences  grow  in  depth  and 
purity.  Through  them  men  gain  the  practical 
conviction  of  God's  personal  nature  as  Sustainer  and 
Ground  of  the  higher  or  ethical  hfe  in  human  per- 
sons. Spiritual  faith  in  God  begins  in  vital  deeds. 
Through  the  personal  act  of  faith  the  venture  and 
the  deed  ripen  to  new  insight,  to  deeper  experience. 
Faith  thus  becomes  an  ethical  or  spiritual  act  —  a 


154      JESUS    CHRIST    AND    CIVILIZATION   OF    TO-DAY 

deed  of  freedom.  And  the  act  of  faith  becomes 
anticipatory  of  fuller  knowledge  of  God.  As  men 
work  for  the  true,  the  just,  for  love  and  beauty  in 
human  life,  the  conviction  must  grow  upon  them  that 
their  spiritual  deeds  are  permanent  in  effect  and 
meaning  and  this  implies  the  conviction  of  God's 
ReaHty  as  Supreme  and  Holy  PersonaHty.  The 
service  of  the  larger  life,  the  life  of  truth  and  justice 
and  love  in  human  relations,  deepens  men's  insight 
into  God's  nature  as  sustainer  of  the  ethical  life  in  the 
individual.  Through  their  own  personal  growth  in 
the  ethical  life  men  come  to  see  that  God  reveals 
Himself  in  the  social  and  historical  development 
of  the  human  spirit  as  well  as  in  the  inmost 
secret  centre  of  the  personal  hfe.  It  is  through 
this  active  service  of  the  good  that  men  gain 
the  conviction  that  nature  is  really  and  ultimately 
subordinate  to  human  ends  and  that  the  social  and 
historical  development  of  humanity,  in  all  its  institu- 
tions and  activities,  gets  permanent  significance  only 
in  so  far  as  these  things  serve  as  instruments  of  the 
higher  spiritual  life.  Through  this  personal  service 
men  come  to  see  in  God  the  supreme  ground  of  all. 
He  is  known  through  personal  ethical  deeds,  through 
communion  with  and  participation  in  the  work  of 
humanity.  Jesus  calls  men  to  these  deeds.  He 
stirs  up  in  them  these  experiences.  He  has  done  so 
through  his  life,  but  also  through  his  death.  For 
in  him  teaching  and  deed  were  absolutely  one  and 
harmonious.    His  death  was  the  supreme  deed  of 


THE    IDEA    OF   GOD  155 

his  life,  for  it  was  the  final  and  complete  expression 
of  the  purpose  and  meaning  of  his  life.  Hence  the 
supreme  ethical  significance  of  that  death.  The  life 
had  been  the  perfect  embodiment  of  the  absolute 
Love  of  God  which  was  Jesus'  one  message  to  man. 
He  Hved  as  the  incarnation  of  his  message  and  his 
death  was  the  seal  thereof.  And  the  resurrection  has 
its  ethical  and  spiritual  significance  as  the  expression 
of  the  triumph  of  the  Personal  Spirit  of  Jesus,  the 
perfect  embodiment  of  Love,  over  brute  nature  and 
the  forces  of  evil  in  human  society.  Faith  in  the 
resurrection  is  the  symbol  of  Faith  in  Righteousness 
and  Love  as  Triumphant  and  Divine.  Since,  more- 
over, ethical  quaUties  always  inhere  in  persons  or 
spiritual  selves,  this  faith  must  and  does  take  the 
form  of  faith  in  the  continued  personal  existence  of 
Jesus  Christ  and  of  his  spiritual  presence  in  the  lives 
of  the  individual  and  the  church. 

Through  Jesus'  personaHty  as  teacher  and  doer, 
then,  the  moral  postulate  of  the  ReaHty  of  a  supreme 
ethical  Person  or  Absolute  Spirit  becomes  a  histori- 
cally potent  faith  rooted  in  and  growing  through 
ethical  activity  and  aspiration.  Hence  it  is  that 
faith  in  God  as  more  than  at  best  an  impersonal 
intelligence  or  abstract  ethical  world-order  is  gener- 
ated through  contact  with  Jesus  and  through  ac- 
ceptance of  his  challenge  to  spiritual  action.  Hence 
it  is  that  communion  with  a  living  and  loving  God  is 
historically  mediated  through  Jesus. 

From  the  ethical  standpoint,  then,  we  may  say  that 


156      JESUS    CHRIST   AND    CIVILIZATION   OF    TO-DAY 

the  supreme  deed  of  Jesus,  the  source  of  his  abiding 
meaning  and  efficiency  in  the  spiritual  history  of 
man,  is  the  creation  in  the  human  heart  of  the  Hving 
and  growing  conviction  of  the  ReaHty  of  a  Trans- 
cendent or  Absolute  Spirit  of  Righteousness  and  Love 
who  rules  and  guides  the  movement  of  human 
history  as  well  as  that  of  external  nature. 

Through  his  life  and  through  his  summons  to 
deeds  in  devotion  to  man's  spiritual  life  Jesus  in- 
spires men  with  the  confidence  that  at  the  heart  of 
the  universe  there  dwells  not  an  impersonal  abstrac- 
tion, but  a  Life  and  Love  in  which  we  share. 

This  confidence  must  begin  perhaps  weakly  in  a 
personal  venture  or  act  of  faith.  But  in  him  who 
companies  with  Jesus  it  grows  into  something  fike 
full  insight.  Faith  becomes  anticipatory  to  know- 
ledge. But  whether  the  relationship  be  one  preemi- 
nently of  faith  or  insight,  in  any  case  it  is  rooted  in 
personal  deeds  —  in  acts  of  spiritual  freedom.  And, 
in  affirming  the  true,  the  just,  and  the  merciful,  man 
is  always  on  the  road  to  this  faith. 

We  have  said  that  Jesus'  contribution  to  the  idea 
of  God  was  that  of  a  personal  life.  And  when  we 
have  fathomed  the  secret  and  mysterious  move- 
ments of  personality  and  traced  to  their  ultimate 
source  the  up-welling  fountains  of  inspiration  that 
come  out  of  the  heart  of  a  perfect  Hfe,  then  and 
only  then  may  we  claim  to  have  sounded  the  depths 
of  the  religion  of  Jesus. 

But  there  is  one  problem  that  arises  in  connection 


THE   IDEA   OF   GOD  157 

with  the  ethical  conception  of  God  which  we  have 
not  considered  and  we  must  at  least  discuss  Jesus' 
practical  attitude  thereto.  This  is  the  problem  of 
evil. 

(3)    The  Problem  of  Evil 

Jesus  offers  no  theoretical  justification  of  God's 
goodness  in  relation  to  the  evil  of  the  world.  He 
does  not  theorize  at  all  on  this  matter.  Evil  is  for 
him  a  condition  of  actual  existence  to  be  faced  and 
conquered  rather  than  to  be  theorized  about  or 
explained  away.  Nevertheless  if  we  look  closely  at 
his  practical  attitude  we  shall  find  it  involves  a 
doctrine  of  evil  and  a  theodicy  or  justification  of  the 
ways  of  God. 

And  what  we  have  in  mind  here  is  the  problem  of 
moral  evil,  of  the  reality  of  sin  in  a  universe  which  is 
dependent  upon  and  governed  by  an  All-Holy  Being. 

In  order  that  we  may  see  clearly  the  nature  of  the 
issue  here  we  must  carefully  distinguish  between  the 
existence  of  physical  evil,  natural  catastrophes,  physi- 
cal suffering,  the  untimely  death  of  the  brightest 
and  best,  etc.,  and  the  actuaHty  of  human  wrong- 
doing, of  moral  failure  and  deliberate  sin. 

I  have  already  dealt  with  the  problem  of  physical 
or  natural  evil  in  the  chapter  entitled  ''Nature  and 
Human  Nature."  I  may  here  remind  the  reader 
that  Jesus  does  not  regard  external  misfortunes  and 
physical  sufferings  as  the  fruits  of  individual  guilt. 
"Or  those  eighteen  upon  whom  the  tower  in  Siloam 


158      JESUS    CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

fell  and  killed  them  thinkest  thou  that  they  were  sin- 
ners above  all  men?"  (Luke  13  :  4).  "And  fear  not 
them  which  kill  the  body,  but  are  not  able  to  kill  the 
soul ;  but  rather  fear  him  that  hath  power  to  destroy 
both  soul  and  body  in  hell"  (Matt.  10  :  28). 

Jesus  is  ever  tender  and  compassionate  toward 
suffering  and  misfortune.  But  these  he  simply 
recognizes  as  part  of  the  natural  order  in  an  imper- 
fect world.  He  does  not  even  trace  the  origin  of  these 
physical  evils  to  the  fall  of  Adam.  He  does  not  say 
that  we  are  all  enmeshed  in  a  social  doom  from 
which  some  may  be  snatched  by  God's  unsearch- 
able decrees.  Jesus  clearly  sees  that  while  moral 
evil  sometimes  brings  physical  suffering  in  its  train, 
this  is  by  no  means  always  the  case,  and  he  calls  on 
his  disciples  to  alleviate,  as  he  alleviates,  suffering  and 
to  overcome  and  to  free  themselves  from  the  fear  of 
physical  evil. 

His  fundamental  attitude  is  that  the  spiritual  life 
of  man  is  superior  to  all  shapes  of  physical  evil,  that 
it  can  endure  throughout  the  direst  suffering  and  that 
the  exercise  of  this  heroic  endurance  and  the  coura- 
geous assertion  of  the  inviolability  of  the  soul  in  the 
face  of  physical  wreck  is  rewarded  by  a  deeper 
happiness.  Jesus  teaches  further  that  there  is  an 
eternal  law  of  compensation  in  the  universe.  Laz- 
arus who  hungered  and  suffered  on  earth,  in  para- 
dise lies  on  Abraham's  bosom  while  the  self-indulgent 
and  unpitying  rich  man  suffers  torments. 

On  the  other  hand  the  entire  teaching  and  appeal 


THE    IDEA    OF   GOD 


159 


of  Jesus  to  the  spirit  and  will  of  man  involves  his 
belief  in  man's  moral  responsibility.  The  soul  of 
the  individual  is  endowed  with  power  to  choose  and 
on  it  are  imposed  tremendous  responsibilities.  "If 
thine  eye  be  evil,  pluck  it  out,  and  cast  it  from  thee. 
It  is  better  to  enter  into  life  with  one  eye,  rather  than 
having  two  eyes  to  be  cast  into  hell  fire  "  (Matt. 
18  :  9). 

The  origin  of  moral  evil  is  in  the  will  of  the  indi- 
vidual. The  possibilities  of  sin  reside  in  the  in- 
herited nature  of  man  by  which  the  individual  is 
tied  up  with  the  life  of  the  race.  The  materials  of 
human  character  lie  in  the  inherited  dispositions, 
inborn  tendencies  of  the  individual,  and  by  these  his 
life  is  bound  up  with  the  past  of  his  race.  Further- 
more a  man's  actual  character  is  largely  dependent 
on  the  influence  of  social  and  even  of  physical  en- 
vironments. All  these  forces  making  for  the  de- 
termination of  character  Jesus  recognizes.  "Unto 
whomsoever  much  is  given,  of  him  shall  much  be 
required"  (Luke  12  :  48).  But  in  the  last  resort  the 
moral  quality  of  man  rises  from  his  heart.  In  the 
tragic  issues  of  life  Jesus  holds  that  sin  is  the  off- 
spring of  the  human  will.  He  sees  in  its  universal 
possibihty  for  man  the  consequence  of  that  power 
of  free  self-determination  by  which  alone  man  is 
higher  than  brute-nature  and  able  to  direct  his  own 
growth  God  ward.  The  problem  of  moral  evil  then, 
as  Jesus  treats  it,  reduces  itself  to  the  ultimate  nature 
of  free  moral  beings.  Since  men  are  free,  sin  becomes 


l6o      JESUS   CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

a  reality  through  the  weakness  of  the  higher  will  as 
against  the  lower  impulses  and,  in  some  cases,  through 
the  apparently  demoniacal  preference  of  evil  to  good. 

Jesus  recognizes  fully  the  reaHty  of  moral  evil  or 
sin.  He  deepens  men's  sense  of  its  enormity  and  its 
dread  power  over  life.  And  he  does  not  attempt  the 
impossible  task  of  showing  why  or  how  the  existence 
of  beings  with  the  possibiHty  of  evil  in  their  hearts 
is  a  necessary  consequence  of  God's  creative  activity. 
He  does  not  teach  men  either  that  God  was  or  was 
not  Hmited  to  this  present  world-order  in  his  choice 
of  a  world  to  call  into  being.  Jesus  simply  takes  the 
world  as  it  exists  to  be  dependent  on  God  without 
calling  into  question  God's  goodness  or  His  infinite 
power  in  creating  this  world. 

And  in  this  world,  as  he  looks  it  squarely  in  the 
face,  Jesus  finds  in  the  hearts  of  men  the  dread 
possibilities  and  actualities  of  sin.  But  this  is  not 
all  that  he  has  to  say.  Weak  though  he  be,  man 
has  yet  the  power  to  respond  to  the  call  of  the  good. 
Awful  though  evil  seem  to  be,  it  is  overcome  by  love. 
Mysterious  and  tragic  seems  the  life  of  man  aspiring 
heavenward  but  ever  falling  back  into  the  mire.  But 
man  is  through  all  a  child  of  God  —  an  oflfspring  of 
a  Cosmic,  Personal  Love,  and  this  Love  is  ever  tri- 
umphant over  evil.  It  is  quite  true  that  Jesus 
recognizes  the  existence  of  a  positive  principle  of  evil 
in  the  world  of  human  society.  He  uses  the  terms 
of  contemporary  Hebrew  thought  for  this  principle. 
Like  his  fellow-countrymen  he  speaks  of  Satan  as 


TH£  IDEA  OF  GOD 


lOl 


a  person  and  as  the  prince  of  evil.  To  use  the  terms 
current  in  his  time  was  a  part  of  Jesus'  pedagogical 
method.  Without  going  into  the  question  whether 
all  these  sayings  in  regard  to  Satan  are  genuine  utter- 
ances of  the  Master,  we  may  say  that  it  is  in  entire 
consonance  with  Jesus'  ethical  teaching  that  he 
should  have  recognized  the  solidarity  of  the  race  in 
respect  of  evil  as  well  as  of  good,  and  no  other  great 
teacher  has  ever  so  clearly  seen  and  taught  the  social 
or  communal  interdependence  of  the  human  race. 
And  it  is  a  corollary  of  this  social  solidarity  that  the 
innocent  should  suffer  for  the  guilty,  and  that  men 
should  be  redeemed  from  the  power  of  the  positive 
principle  of  evil  in  the  race  by  the  absolute  devotion 
of  the  good.  The  spread  of  evil  through  heredity 
and  social  contagion  must  be  checked  and  overcome 
through  the  contagious  inspiration  and  power  of  love. 
Jesus'  recognition  of  the  necessity  of  his  death  for  the 
completion  of  his  work  and  teaching  is  the  clearest 
expression  of  this  principle.  He  dies  that  men  may 
know  and  be  touched  by  the  power  of  love  over  evil 
and  hatred. 

Nor  does  Jesus  deny  that  there  may  be  some 
ultimate  mysterious  connection  of  moral  evil  with 
physical  evil.  The  very  solidarity  of  the  race,  which 
he  explicitly  recognizes,  implies  some  relation  be- 
tween physical  suffering  and  moral  evil.  What 
Jesus  does  expHcitly  deny  is  that  the  physical  evil 
or  suffering  which  overtakes  the  individual  is  of 
necessity  either  the  consequence  of  his  own  wrong- 


l62      JESUS   CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF  TO-DAY 

doing  or  that  of  his  parents,  or  even  that  physical  evil 
or  suffering  has  a  merely  disciplinary  character. 
Natural  catastrophes,  unavoidable  pain,  and  mental 
suffering  are  simply  to  be  taken  as  things  to  be 
endured  and  made  the  best  of  through  faith  in  the 
Absolute  or  Supreme  Love  who  will  not  permit  the 
soul  that  heroically  believes  and  endures  to  suffer  any 
final  and  irreparable  loss.  The  power  of  God's 
love  to  restore  the  sinner  and  the  wanderer  to  his 
true  destiny  of  communion  with  God  Himself  is 
limited  only  by  the  presence  or  absence  of  man's 
initial  act  of  turning,  howsoever  weakly  and  blindly, 
toward  the  good  and  of  opening  his  soul  to  the  cur- 
rents of  spiritual  life  that  flow  from  the  Father's 
heart. 

Jesus  sees  in  the  actual  moral  evil  of  humanity 
the  mysterious  blending  of  ignorance  and  error  with 
deliberate  choice,  the  inextricable  interfusion  of  the 
personal  attitude  of  wrong-doing  with  the  weakness 
of  inherent  tendencies  and  wild  natural  passions.  He 
sees  the  taint  of  evil  social  influence  warping  the 
naturally  good  tendencies  of  the  soul.  Even  in  his 
bitterest  enemies  he  sees  the  fatal  blindness  of  tradi- 
tion and  the  power  of  prejudice  and  authority  inter- 
woven with  conscious  and  personal  hostility  to  the 
higher  good  revealed  in  himself.  Even  here  in  the 
last  crisis  of  his  Hfe,  with  the  insight  of  a  super- 
human Love,  Jesus  recognizes  that  the  souls  of  these 
who  repudiate  absolute  love  and  goodness  and 
crucify  him  for  his  devotion  to  man's  righteousness 


THE   IDEA   OF   GOD  163 

and  eternal  blessedness  are  warped  by  ingrained 
prejudice,  blinded  by  the  fateful  influences  of  ec- 
clesiastical authority  and  national  pride.  He  does 
not  attempt  to  separate  the  error  from  the  evil,  to  sift 
the  conscious  element  of  sin  from  the  force  of  igno- 
rance. His  words  are  —  *' Father,  forgive  them,  for 
they  know  not  what  they  do  "  (Luke  23 :  34).  Jesus 
sees  the  mystery  and  tragedy  involved  in  the  confused 
intermixture  of  error  and  sin  in  human  life,  of 
vicious  habit  ignorantly  acquired,  of  love  turned  to 
lust,  of  noble  strength  turned  to  destruction,  by  the 
force  of  circumstances  and  the  harsh  condemnation 
of  a  world  cold  and  blind  in  its  judgments.  He 
warns  his  disciples  —  "Judge  not,  that  ye  be  not 
judged"  (Matt.  7:1). 

But,  notwithstanding  all  the  sin  and  error  in  the 
world,  men  are  still  children  of  God.  The  Father 
welcomes  the  prodigal  son.  There  is  ever  joy 
in  heaven  that  the  errant  son  has  wakened  to  a 
consciousness  of  his  true  destiny  and  turned  his 
steps  homeward.  Over  all  evil  and  ignorance  there 
rules  supreme  a  Divine  Love  and  Grace.  Man  is 
in  essence  a  moral  and  spiritual  being.  As  such  he 
must,  by  his  own  actions  and  through  his  own  in- 
dividual experience,  find  God,  and  in  finding  God  find 
his  own  true  selfhood.  And  the  practical  solution  of 
the  problem  of  evil  which  Jesus  offers  is  that  when 
man  does  awake  to  a  sense  of  his  Divine  destiny  and 
seek  God's  righteousness  there  is  at  the  heart  of 
things  a  Supreme  Love  with  the  power  and  the  will  to 


164   JESUS   CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF  TO-DAY 

free  him  from  the  misery  and  the  burden  of  sin.  The 
problem  of  evil  is  solved  through  the  conviction  that 
a  Personal,  Cosmic  Love  works  in  and  with  the 
human  will  in  its  endeavours  after  goodness.  This 
conviction  Jesus  engenders  by  his  teaching  and  his 
life  and  death.  His  whole  earthly  career  was  the 
utterance  of  this  conviction.  His  death  was  the  final 
act  of  affirmation  of  the  absolute  supremacy  of  Love 
and  Grace  in  the  universe.  The  whole  earthly 
career  of  Jesus  was  the  witness  to  his  unshakable 
assurance  of  the  triumph  of  Righteousness  and  Love 
in  the  universe,  and  the  faith  in  his  resurrection  and 
continued  existence  are  the  seal  and  symbol  of  that 
assurance  bom  in  the  hearts  of  the  sons  of  men  by 
companionship  with  the  Master. 

For  the  follower  of  Jesus,  then,  the  problem  of  evil 
is  not  solved  by  denying  its  reality  or  asserting  that 
God  is  limited  by  it.  The  practical  solution  of  the 
problem  lies  in  the  total  influence  of  Jesus'  life,  death, 
and  risen  life  by  which  men  are  awakened  to  the 
conviction  that  their  true  and  ethical  destiny  is  to 
be  co-workers  with  God  and  so  sharers  in  the  spiritual 
movement  of  the  universe.  Faith  in  Jesus  is  the 
expression  of  faith  in  the  triumph  of  personal  good- 
ness and  love  in  the  universe.  Faith  in  Jesus  is 
hence  an  ethical  faith  and  it  strengthens  man's 
powers  to  strive  for  the  good  while  at  the  same  time 
it  cheers  him  with  the  knowledge  that,  though  he 
may  fall  far  short  through  ignorance  or  sin,  God's 
supreme  attribute  is  Love.    Through  the  out-going 


THE   IDEA   OF   GOD  165 

of  this  love  without  stint  the  better  tendencies  of 
human  nature  are  strengthened  to  overcome  the  evil 
within  the  heart  and  to  bear  the  ills  incident  to  human 
nature. 

Jesus'  own  personal  life  and  attitude  is  his  solution 
of  the  problem  of  evil.  If  he  be  the  true  expression  of 
God's  attitude  toward  man,  then  is  evil  already 
overcome. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE   INFLUENCE   OF  JESUS'   TEACHING  AND  OF 
OTHER   ETHICAL    SYSTEMS 

The  whole  earthly  career  of  Jesus  Christ  was  the 
incorporation  of  his  teaching  in  life  and  action.  His 
ethical  principles  constitute  a  coherent  whole,  but 
they  are  not  a  cunningly  devised  system  put  to- 
gether by  reflection.  They  are  a  series  of  genial 
intuitions,  that  flow  spontaneously  from  a  living 
personality  whose  meaning  and  the  secret  of  whose 
influence  they  do  not  exhaust.  As  we  study  them, 
these  ethical  or  spiritual  intuitions  lead  us  back  to 
him  and,  indeed,  they  seem  but  the  casual  utterances 
of  a  spirit  so  infinitely  rich  and  full  that  we  cannot 
comprehend  it  in  the  mystery  of  its  strength  and  beauty, 
but  that  we  grow  to  feel  more  fully  as  we  endeavour 
to  live  out  its  promptings.  Hence  the  living  and 
perennial  power  of  Jesus  as  an  ethical  teacher. 
Many  philosophical  systems  of  ethics  seem  more 
rigorous  and  systematically  complete  than  his ;  but, 
perhaps,  in  part,  for  this  very  reason  they  one  and  all 
lack  the  touch  of  life  and  the  power  of  expansion. 

Let  us  pause  for  a  moment  to  compare  the  ethical 
influence  of  Jesus'  teaching  with  more  formal  sys- 

i66 


THE   INFLUENCE   OF   JESUS'   TEACHING         167 

terns.  The  two  great  ethical  schools  of  the  Graeco- 
Roman  world  diverged  greatly  in  their  definitions  of 
the  summum  bonum,  since  according  to  the  Epicu- 
reans this  was  pleasure,  pure  and  lasting ;  an  aesthetic 
enjoyment  of  life  attained  through  moderation  of 
desire,  reflection,  and  social  urbanity  of  disposition ; 
and,  according  to  the  Stoics,  a  Hfe  in  harmony  with 
reason  or  nature.  But  these  schools  converged  in 
their  picture  of  the  ideal  wise  man  or  sage,  whose 
chief  concern  was  to  make  himself  proof  against 
"the  slings  and  arrows  of  outrageous  fortune,"  by 
keeping  himself  free  from  all  social,  political,  and 
family  entanglements  and  so  independent  of  all 
intense  affections  and  external  vicissitudes.  The 
Stoics  identified  the  nature  of  things  with  Reason^ 
and,  hence,  for  them  a  life  guided  by  reason  was  a  Hfe 
according  to  nature,  a  happy  life.  The  Epicureans 
taught  that  a  Hfe  of  pleasure  or  happiness,  lasting 
and  free  from  admixture  of  pain,  was  attainable  only 
through  a  reflective  serenity  of  mind  and  a  prudent 
detachment  of  heart,  since  only  in  this  way  could  a 
man  insure  his  own  freedom  from  extremes  of  inner 
feeling  and  from  the  power  of  vicissitudes  of  circum- 
stance to  hurt  him.  Hence  the  Epicurean  employed 
reason  to  attain  purity  and  duration  of  pleasurable 
feeling  and  eschewed  the  violent  commotions  of  the 
coarser  pleasures;  whereas  the  Stoic,  subduing 
emotion  by  the  exercise  of  will  and  reason,  found  a 
mild  and  lasting  pleasure  therein.  Starting  with 
apparently  antithetical  aims,  Stoic  and  Epicurean 


i  UN 


1 68      JESUS    CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

sage  arrived  at  pretty  nearly  the  same  goal.  The 
wise  man  of  both  schools  was  a  refined  and  philo- 
sophical egoist  who  would  allow  no  social  ties,  of 
whatsoever  description,  to  encroach  on  his  serenity 
of  mind.  He  would  give  no  hostages  to  fortune. 
It  is  true  the  great  Stoics  ^  contributed  more  that  is 
positive  to  human  culture  than  did  the  Epicureans. 
There  is  in  the  former  a  strain  of  stem  strength,  a 
tonic  quahty  of  mind,  that  the  latter  lack.  The 
Stoics  developed  in  some  degree  a  feeling  of  obliga- 
tion, which  led  them  bravely  to  face  the  tasks  that 
confronted  them,  although  no  social  or  poHtical 
activity  could  be  to  them  of  first  importance  ethically. 
Stoicism  fostered  a  manly  and  vigorous  type  of 
character  in  which  all  stress  was  laid  on  the  inward, 
moral  disposition.  The  Stoics  advanced  the  doctrine 
of  a  common  humanity,  a  universal  brotherhood, 
based  on  the  view  that  all  men  are  fundamentally 
alike ;  since  they  are  all  the  offspring  of  the  natural 
order  and  have  all  a  share  in  the  universal  reason  or 
law  which  is  the  soul  of  nature.  So  far  their  teaching 
approximates  to  the  ethics  of  Jesus.  But  the  Stoics 
were  prone  to  place  a  wide  gap  between  the  few 
wise  men  who  recognized  the  rationality  and  good- 
ness of  the  natural  order  and  the  many  fools. 
Hence,  while  recognizing  fully  the  value  of  this 
teaching,  especially  in  furnishing  a  philosophical 
foundation  for  the  administration  of  justice  in  the 
Roman  Empire  and  in  developing  a  more  humane 
^  Zeno,  Chrysippus,  Seneca,  Marcus  Aurelius,  Epictetus. 


THE   INFLUENCE  OF   JESUS'   TEACHING        1 69 

disposition,  one  may  rightly  insist  that  the  Stoic 
principles  were  well-nigh  devoid  of  moral  dynamic. 
They  lacked  the  creative,  spiritual  energy  that  the 
ancient  world  needed ;  they  were  deficient  in  warmth 
and  devotion  and  had  not  the  power  to  enkindle 
a  new  world-movement.  They  expressed  no  gentle 
and  yet  burning  love  for  men.  There  is  a  long  inter- 
val between  the  theoretical  deduction  of  universal 
brotherhood  from  the  common  dependence  of  man 
on  nature  or  on  an  abstract  universal  Reason,  and 
active  love  for  man  based  on  the  faith  in  the  infinite 
value  of  the  individual  soul  in  the  eyes  of  a  Common 
Father  whose  inmost  nature  and  attitude  toward 
mankind  is  believed  to  have  been  embodied  in  a 
historical  human  personality  who  has  so  perfectly 
embodied  the  principle  that  the  very  memory  of  him 
enkindles  passionate  devotion  and  enthusiastic 
love. 

In  many  respects  the  ethics  of  that  greatest  of 
philosophers,  Plato,  remind  one  of  the  gospels.  His 
saying  that  it  is  better  to  suffer  than  to  do  injustice 
is  prophetic  of  the  teaching  of  Jesus.^  His  picture 
of  the  idealized  Master,  Socrates,  reminds  one  in  some 
respects  of  the  gospel  portrait  of  the  Christ,  especially 
in  the  manner  in  which  he  bears  witness  to  his 
doctrine  by  his  death.  Plato's  doctrine  of  the  good, 
as  the  supreme  cosmic  principle,  strongly  resembles 
the  gospel  teaching  in  regard  to  the  Heavenly 
Father   who    is    alone    Good.    And    the    Platonic 

1  The  Republic,  Book  II. 


lyo      JESUS    CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

notion  of  Eros,  or  love,  the  burning  enthusiasm  or 
devotion  that  carries  the  soul  onward  and  upward 
from  lower  to  higher,  from  things  of  sense  to  things 
of  the  mind,  from  bodily  beauty  up  through  mental 
beauty  to  the  beauty  of  goodness,  until  at  last  it 
finds  repose  and  joy  in  the  contemplation  of  the 
Supreme  Good,  is  not  unlike  the  gospel  doctrine  of 
that  love  for  righteousness  and  peace  which  inspires 
and  guides  men  toward  perfection  in  the  image  of  a 
Heavenly  Father/ 

None  the  less,  there  are  great  differences  between 
the  ethics  of  Plato  and  the  ethics  of  Jesus  Christ. 
Plato's  way  of  salvation  is  for  the  few  who  have  and 
develop  the  power  of  reflective  contemplation.  It  is 
speculative  and  aristocratic.  The  mass  of  men  do 
not  and  cannot  attain  unto  it.  They  must  remain 
simply  hewers  of  wood  and  drawers  of  water.  The 
highest  virtue  to  which  the  artisan  and  merchant 
class  in  Plato's  ideal  commonwealth  can  attain  is 
temperance.  They  have  no  immediate  part  in 
justice,  i.e.  they  do  not  directly  participate  in  its 
realization,  —  much  less  in  wisdom,  the  highest 
virtue,  the  virtue  of  the  noblest  part  of  the  soul. 
Moreover,  the  Supreme  Good  in  Plato's  system  is, 
after  all,  an  unhistorical  abstraction,  a  metaphysical 
entity;  not  a  living  personality  who  stands  in  re- 
ciprocal or  social  relations  of  love  with  men.  The 
Supreme  Good  of  Plato  is  not  a  living  principle 
that  enters  into  organic  relations  with  men  in  society 

^  See  especially  the  Symposium. 


THE   INFLUENCE   OF   JESUS'    TEACHING        171 

and  that  fulfils  itself  through  sympathy  and  labour 
in  the  historical  life  of  humanity. 

Hence,  while  Plato  clearly  sees  the  necessity  of  the 
social  life  to  the  full  fruition  of  humanity,  the  goal 
of  the  philosopher  lies  beyond  the  personal  and 
social  life.  The  philosopher  only  takes  part  re- 
luctantly in  the  affairs  of  state.  He  does  not  find 
his  highest  life  in  service  but  in  contemplation. 
Hence,  too,  the  ascetic  and  dualistic  strain  that  often 
predominates  in  Plato,  although  by  no  means  always ; 
e.g.  not  in  the  Republic.  Withdrawal  from  the 
world  and  the  denial  of  the  bodily  life  with  its  mani- 
fold claims  and  interest  are  necessary  to  the  attain- 
ment of  Wisdom,  the  highest  Good.  It  is,  of  course, 
true  that  the  lowlier  virtues  of  temperance  and 
courage  are  the  necessary  prerequisites  to  the  attain- 
ment of  the  higher  virtues  of  justice  and  wisdom,  and 
the  way  to  perfection  lies  through  the  social  life. 
Nevertheless  for  Plato  ethical  perfection  is  attained 
by  contemplation  and  thought.  It  Hes  beyond  the 
social  Hfe.  As  the  teaching  of  Jesus  knows  no 
distinction  of  higher  and  lower  in  virtue^  so  it  knows 
no  state  of  blessedness  in  which  one's  fellows  may  be 
forgotten.     God  himseK  is  a  social  Being. 

Modem  systems  of  ethics  that  have  been  influential 
have,  in  so  far  as  they  have  gone  beyond  Greek  ethics, 
arisen  from  a  common  moral  consciousness  into  which 
the  Christian  element  has  entered  as  a  dominant, 
transforming  influence.  These  independent  sys- 
tems  have    unconsciously   drawn    upon    Christian 


172      JESUS   CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

motives,  ideas,  and  aims  that  have  become  worked 
into  the  very  fibre  of  moral  tradition.  The  seeming 
independence  of  these  modern  systems  is  due  in  large 
part  to  the  fact  that,  drawing  from  a  common  and 
generally  diffused  moral  consciousness,  which  is  the 
heritage  of  Christian  civiHzation,  they  have  formu- 
lated, in  terms  of  an  independent  philosophy  of 
conduct,  principles  that  are  Christian  in  motive,  but 
have  usually  forgotten  or  ignored  their  own  sources. 
Influential  modern  ethical  systems,  up  to  the  advent 
of  Darwinism  and  the  appHcation  of  this  theory  to 
conduct,  have  invariably  taken  up  some  element  of 
the  moral  common  sense  of  a  civiHzation  that  has 
absorbed  the  Christian  point  of  view.  Hence,  the 
obvious  reasonableness  of  the  appeal  that  these 
systems  make  and  the  appearance  they  show  of 
standing  on  their  own  feet,  of  being  free  from 
traditional  presuppositions.  The  two  most  influ- 
ential ethical  doctrines  in  recent  times  have  been 
Utilitarianism  in  its  several  forms,  and  the  doctrine 
of  Self-Perjection,  or  Self-Realization,  as  the  highest 
good  or  ultimate  standard  of  conduct.  'Without  the 
Christian  principle  that  the  true  or  ideal  self  is  social 
in  character,  and  that,  hence,  spiritual  personality  is 
attained  by  the  life  of  service  and  fellowship,  the 
doctrine  of  Self-Perfection,  i.e.  of  the  full  and  harmo- 
nious development  of  the  individual's  capacities,  as 
the  End  or  Highest  Goody  becomes  at  best  a  refined 
and  enlightened  Egoism  —  a  reflective  pursuit  of  the 
maximum  of  individual  culture  and  happiness  with- 


THE   INFLUENCE   OF   JESUS'    TEACHING        1 73 

out  regard  to  the  welfare  of  others.  What  self- 
perfection  means,  in  terms  of  the  ethics  of  Jesus,  has 
already  been  considered  at  length  in  this  and  the 
preceding  chapters  and  need  not  detain  us  here. 

UtiHtarianism,  or  universalistic  Hedonism,  the  view 
which  regards  the  greatest  happiness  of  the  greatest 
number,^  or  the  greatest  pleasure  for  one's  self  and 
others  taken  together,  i.e.  the  greatest  attainable 
pleasure  on  the  whole,^  as  the  Highest  Good  or 
standard  of  conduct,  has  no  other  independent 
psychological  basis  than  the  fact  that  men  do  desire 
pleasure  and  that,  because  of  the  inborn  feeling  of 
sympathy,  the  pleasure  of  others  may  he  a  pleasure 
for  the  individual.  In  strict  logic  this  theory  is  not 
entitled  to  assert  that  there  is  any  obligation  on  the 
part  of  the  individual  to  seek  higher  pleasures  at  the 
expense  of  lower  pleasures,  or  the  pleasures  of  others 
at  the  expense  of  his  own  pleasure.  The  passage 
from  the  fact  that  a  man  seeks  his  own  pleasure  to 
the  theory  that  every  man  ought  to  promote  the 
pleasures  of  others  or  the  greatest  attainable  pleasure 
of  all  seems  easily  made  and  makes  a  strong  appeal 
to  unreflecting  common  sense,  because  the  teaching 
of  Jesus  as  to  mutual  service,  sympathy,  and  fellow- 
ship has  become  engrained  in  the  common  sense  of 
men  and  has  become  part  and  parcel  of  the  moral 
consciousness  of  the  occidental  world. 

In  this  sense,  then,  the  doctrines  of  Utilitarianism 
have  received  acceptance  and  flourished  because  of 

»  J.  S.  Mill.  =  Henry  Sidgwick. 


174      JESUS    CHRIST    AND   CIVILIZATION    OF   TO-DAY 

their  parasitic  character.  Their  altruistic  and  truly 
moral  element  is  not  derived  from  their  psycholog- 
ical starting-point  that  pleasure  is,  as  a  fact,  the  end 
of  man's  endeavour.  This  view  does  not  logically 
lead  beyond  an  enlightened  Egoism.  The  fact,  if  it 
be  a  fact  (which  I,  for  one,  do  not  admit),  that  men 
always  seek  the  greatest  attainable  pleasure  for 
themselves,  carries  with  it  no  obligation  for  me  to 
seek  any  pleasure  for  other  men  at  my  own  expense. 
If  pleasure  be  the  sole  end  of  action,  then,  since  I  am 
a  social  being,  an  enlightened  and  prudential 
selfishness  may  lead  me  to  promote  the  pleasures  of 
other  men  in  order  to  lighten  social  friction  and  by 
sympathy  (if  I  am  sympathetic)  to  enhance  my  own 
pleasure.  But,  in  case  of  doubt  or  conflict  between 
my  immediate  pleasure  and  the  pleasure  of  even 
all  other  sentient  beings,  pleasure  as  a  standard 
does  not  imply  an  obligation  to  any  sacrifice  on  my 
part. 

It  is  not  meant  by  this  argument  that  there  is  no 
independent  field  for  philosophical  ethics,  or  that, 
outside  of  Jesus'  teachings  and  the  sphere  of  their 
historical  influence,  there  has  been  no  progress  in 
ethical  insight  or  moral  practice.  The  ethical  teach- 
ing of  Jesus  is  of  infinitely  more  value  to  man  if  it  be 
in  harmony  with  the  general  upward  tendencies  of 
human  culture  and  serve  to  complete  and  to  justify 
these  tendencies,  by  revealing  their  ultimate  founda- 
tions, than  if  this  teaching  were  in  opposition  to,  if  it 
excluded  or  contravened,  the  principles  of  a  human 


THE  INFLUENCE   OF    JESUS'    TEACHING         1 75 

morality  worked  out  through  the  incalculable  ages  in 
which  man  has  developed  from  the  life  of  brute 
instinct  to  the  life  of  rationality  and  sociality. 

With  reference  not  only  to  the  heart  of  Hebrew 
ethics,  to  Moses  and  the  prophets,  but  as  well  with 
reference  to  the  entire  movement  of  moral  and 
humane  culture,  it  may  be  said  of  Jesus  that  he  came 
not  to  destroy  but  to  fulfil.  That  the  moral  founda- 
tions of  civihzation  find  their  highest  interpretation 
and  illumination,  as  well  as  motive  power,  in  the 
teachings  and  work  of  Jesus  and  in  the  moral  life 
that  has  historically  issued  from  his  life  is  the  con- 
tention of  the  present  work.^  And  if  modern  pyschol- 
ogy  and  philosophy  discover  the  conditions  of  personal 
growth,  in  all  that  concerns  the  spirit  of  man,  to  be 
social,  and  the  dynamic  of  social  progress  to  be  the 
birth  of  ideals  in  the  rational  spirit  of  free  individual- 
ity, that  is  not  robbing  Jesus  of  his  greatness.  It 
is  a  contribution  to  his  glory  as  pioneer  and  leader 
of  the  new  humanity. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  I  would  insist  that  philo- 
sophical ethics  is  unfruitful  unless  it  be  based  on  the 
history  of  culture.  Common-sense  morality,  as  re- 
flected in  feeling  and  opinion  to-day,  is  a  product  of 
historical  development.  The  history  of  civilization  fur- 
nishes the  materials  for  ethical  reflection.  An  abstract 
theory  that  attempts  to  define,  by  process  of  pure 
logic  and  from  formal  premises,  the  highest  good  and 

^  For  a  good  picture  of  the  immediate  moral  effects  of  the  gos- 
pel, see  E.  von  Dobschutz,  Christian  Life  in  the  Primitive  Church. 


176      JESUS   CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF  TO-DAY 

the  meaning  of  virtue,  without  building  upon  the 
moral  factors  that  have  gone  to  the  shaping  of  our 
civilization,  is  of  little  meaning  and  of  no  practical 
value.^  And  without  doubt,  from  the  standpoint  of 
the  history  of  western  culture,  the  influence  of  Jesus 
and  the  impulses  set  going  by  him  have  been  the 
most  powerful  ideals  or  conscious  factors  in  forming 
our  civiKzation  on  its  moral  side,  just  as  Greek  in- 
fluences have  contributed  most  to  purely  intellectual 
progress. 

Other  ethical  doctrines  have  had  their  day  and 
passed  away.  Each  has  doubtless  given  some  light 
and  had  some  influence  toward  the  growth  of 
humane  civiHzation.  But  beside  that  of  Jesus  they 
all  seem  formal  and  powerless  except  for  the  sporadic 
few  who  can  live  by  the  dry  light  of  reason ;  or  else 
where  they  have  convincing  and  inspiring  power  they 
are  parasitic.  For  example,  Kant,  the  greatest 
moral  philosopher  of  modem  times,  in  his  funda- 
mental insights,  simply  gives  formal  expression  to 
various  aspects  of  the  ethics  of  Jesus  Christ.  His 
Kingdom  of  Ends,  or  Kingdom  of  Personalities,  is 
Jesus'  Kingdom  of  Heaven  garbed  in  other  phrases. 

The  spirit  of  Christ  still  draws  and  instructs  men 
with  power  and  not  as  the  Scribes ;  the  power  is  that 
of  a  life  that  does  not  infringe  on  the  freedom  of  our 
souls,  that  does  not  intimidate  or  impose  an  external 

^  In  an  article  entitied  "  Ethics,  Sociology,  and  Personality  "  in 
the  Philosophical  Review,  Vol.  XV.,  pp.  494  ff.,  I  have  developed 
this  contention  in  more  technical  form. 


THE   INFLUENCE   OF   JESUS'    TEACHING        1 77 

compulsion,  but  that  gently  draws  us  to  him ;  humbles, 
cheers,  and  quickens  us  with  a  tenderness  and  sweet- 
ness that  is  yet  strong  with  a  strength  that  never 
wavers  in  the  face  of  conflict,  suffering,  or  doubt. 
Jesus  speaks  with  authority  in  matters  of  conduct 
and  life,  but  the  authority  is  not  the  external  con- 
straint of  an  institution  or  an  organization,  nor  the 
dogmatism  of  a  cut-and-dried  system  that  chills  the 
spirit  and  fetters  the  reason.*  His  moral  authority 
is  that  of  a  perfect  life,  which,  as  we  submit  to  its 
influences,  arouses  an  answering  witness  in  our 
hearts  and  wins  our  consent  with  the  personal  con- 
viction that,  in  the  company  of  this  life,  our  person- 
alities are  coming  to  their  own,  are  ever  growing  in 
harmony  and  peace,  and  in  the  fellowship  of  the  Life 
Divine  and  Immortal ;  the  life  in  which  man  truly 
finds  himself  at  home  in  the  cosmos  because  his  soul 
has  broken  its  local  and  temporal  fetters  and, 
through  entrance  upon  a  new  humanity,  is  become 
one  with  God. 

In  short,  Jesus'  ovm  life  and  personality  is  the 
ultimate  source  of  his  moral  influence.     He  taught 

^  It  is  a  strange  and  fateful  blindness  that  still  leads  so-called 
ofScial  representatives  of  Jesus  Christ  loudly  to  proclaim  that  there 
is  no  other  way  to  know  and  serve  the  great  Master  of  living,  no 
way  by  which  men's  souls  may  be  enlarged  and  quickened,  no 
way  for  the  weary  and  heavy-laden  to  gain  peace  from  him,  ex- 
cept through  submission  to  the  constraint  of  some  formal  institu- 
tion or  cut-and-dried  system.  The  Master's  words  are  in  place 
here,  "  God  is  not  the  God  of  the  dead,  but  of  the  living " 
(Matt.  22  :  32;  Mark  12  :  27). 
N 


178      JESUS   CHRIST    AND   CIVILIZATION   OF    TO-DAY 

in  deed  as  well  as  in  word.  Besides  his  constant 
deeds  of  healing  the  body  as  well  as  the  mind,  by 
which  he  does  reverence  to  the  body  so  often  despised 
by  his  would-be  followers,  and  allows  no  place  in  his 
thought  for  an  ascetic  dualism,  compare  his  many 
utterances  and  his  frequent  companying  with  the 
socially  outcast  and  despised  —  with  publican  and 
harlot.  ''The  Son  of  man  is  come  to  save  that 
which  was  lost  "  (Matt.  18  :  11);  *'They  that  are 
whole  need  not  a  physician,  but  they  that  are  sick  " 
(Luke  5  :  31);  "He  hath  anointed  me  to  preach 
the  Gospel  to  the  poor"  (Luke  4  :  18),  etc. 

The  harmonious  integrity  of  his  character  and  the 
utterly  unselfish  and  beneficent  nature  of  his  personal 
activity,  both  as  teacher  and  healer,  alone  suffice  to 
elevate  Jesus'  influence  far  above  that  of  all  other 
social  reformers  without  recourse  to  an  emphasis 
on  the  physically  miraculous  incidents  of  his  career 
for  evidence  of  his  supremacy.  Plato  and  Sir 
Thomas  More  sketched  for  us  ideals  of  the  social 
state;  but  Jesus  left  a  concrete  personal  embodi- 
ment of  the  ideal  man  living  out  perfectly  the  life 
of  social  duty  and  of  human  fellowship  in  such  a 
manner  that  men  are  thereby  stimulated,  not  indeed 
to  imitate  him  in  a  slavish  and  external  fashion,  but 
to  work  out  their  lives  freely  in  his  spirit. 


CHAPTER   IX 

JESUS    CHRIST    AND    OTHER    FOUNDERS    OF 
RELIGIONS 

(i)   Personality  and  the  History  of  Religion 

We  have  seen  that  the  influence  exerted  by  Jesus 
on  man's  ideas  of  God,  and  on  their  feeling  of  his 
relationship  to  the  human  family,  is  vitally  and  in- 
extricably bound  up  with  his  own  personaHty.  We 
have  seen  that  it  was  not  through  systematic  theo- 
logical definitions  and  proofs  or  chains  of  philo- 
sophical argument  that  Jesus  wrought  such  a  tre- 
mendous transformation  in  man's  sense  of  the  Divine. 
It  was  through  the  total  and  integral  impress  of  his 
personality  that  Jesus  wrought  this  great  change  in 
his  own  disciples'  feelings  in  regard  to  God ;  and  it  is 
by  this  same  personal  impress  that  he  continues  to 
have  a  vital  influence  on  man's  convictions  concern- 
ing his  own  position  in  the  universe  and  the  attitude 
of  the  Universal  Spirit  toward  him. 

We  may  now  ask  what  is  the  secret  of  this  personal 
influence  ?  Why  should  the  influence  of  Jesus  be  so 
much  more  pervasive  and  profound  than  the  reason- 
ings of  philosophers  and  theologians  ?  This  problem 
is  bound  up  with  the  ultimate  secret  of  personality, 
179 


I  So      JESUS   CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

and  we  cannot  dissect  the  living  personality  into 
elements ;  we  cannot  formulate  it  in  general  terms. 
We  can  only  jeel  in  ourselves  and  note  in  others 
the  influence  of  this  vital,  integral,  personal  life.  It 
is  life  speaking  to  life,  heart  communing  with  heart, 
and  indeed  the  influence  and  relationship  is  here  the 
same  in  kind  as  that  which  obtains  in  the  relation- 
ships of  human  persons.  We  can  never  give  a 
generalized  logical  statement  or  exact  analysis  of 
the  way  in  which  an  individual  in  whom  we  repose 
confidence,  who  awakens  trust,  admiration,  and  love, 
affects  us.  The  direct  relationship  between  living 
persons  is  the  integral  reaction  of  the  soul  known  as 
jaith.  We  may  give  reasons  after  the  experience,  we 
may  enumerate  the  qualities  of  a  person  which  make 
appeal  to  us.  But,  before  we  give  these  reasons 
or  make  this  enumeration,  we  must  first  have  had  the 
living  experience  —  must  first  have  taken  the  attitude 
of  faith  or  confidence  called  forth  in  us  by  the  direct 
stimulus  and  attraction  of  another  living  spirit. 
Hence  we  cannot  state  in  logical  terms  or  express  in 
a  neat  formula  the  influence  of  any  worthy  person- 
ality, much  less  of  the  personality  of  Jesus. 

Nevertheless  a  general  consideration  of  the 
historical  functions  of  personality  will  throw  some 
light  on  the  significance  of  Jesus'  personaHty  as  a 
factor  in  the  spiritual  history  of  man.  Human 
civilization  is  a  social  development.  History,  con- 
sidered as  the  evolution  of  man's  entire  nature,  is  the 
sphere  of  the  growth  of  culture  through  the  organiza- 


FOUNDERS    OF   RELIGIONS  l8l 

tion  of  society.  In  and  through  history  and  society 
man  is  transformed  from  a  merely  natural  being  — 
a  creature  governed  by  random  impulse  and  merely 
sensuous  desires  —  into  a  spiritual  self,  with  power 
of  rational  self-control  and  self -direction.  All  the 
higher  factors  of  culture  (by  which  I  mean  the  whole 
inner  or  spiritual  side  of  civiHzation)  are  expressions 
of  man's  spiritual  activity,  in  contradistinction  to 
his  merely  sensuous  or  natural  and  animal  Hfe.  I 
may  remind  the  reader  here  that  recent  psychological 
studies  have  further  borne  out  the  view,  which  had  al- 
ready found  philosophical  expression  in  the  works  of 
Herder,  Kant,  and,  more  especially,  of  Hegel,  that  man 
becomes  aware  of  his  own  nature  as  a  seK-conscious 
spirit  and  realizes  the  potentiaKties  of  this  spiritual 
nature  through  participation  in  the  common  or  social 
life  of  culture,  and  further,  that  the  social  culture  of 
a  given  time  or  period  is  always  the  resultant  of 
historical  forces.^ 

Now,  society  is  constituted  by  relations  between 
persons.  No  society  can  be  regarded  as  alive  and 
actual  in  which  persons  do  not  enter  into  vital  re- 
lationships with  one  another.  This  is  as  true  of  the 
state  as  it  is  of  a  trades  union,  as  true  of  the  school  as 
it  is  of  the  church,  as  true  of  the  community  as  it  is 
of  the  family.  Of  course  the  smaller  the  group,  the 
more  constant  and  intimate  the  relationships.    Hence 

*  Such  psychological  studies  are  to  be  found  in  Josiah  Royce's 
Sttcdies  of  Good  and  Evil  and  J.  M.  Baldwin's  Social  and  Ethical 
Interpretations  of  Mental  Development. 


1 82       JESUS    CHRIST    AND    CIVILIZATION    OF   TO-DAY 

the  relationships  of  individuals  are  much  closer  and 
more  influential  in  the  family  than  in  the  state. 

Society  is  the  Hving  matrix  or  culture-atmosphere 
of  the  spiritual  Hfe  of  man.  But  society  undergoes 
a  historical  development  and  the  various  forms  or 
aspects  of  the  social-culture  life  of  man,  viz.  the 
creations  and  spirit  of  art^  in  architecture,  sculpture, 
painting,  music,  and  poetry,  the  theories  and  appHca- 
tions  of  scientific  thought^  the  accepted  moral  ideas 
and  the  higher  ethical  ideals  that  influence  a  com- 
munity, all  these  aspects  and  influences  in  the  social 
life  of  human  culture  are  developed  and  made  effec- 
tive through  the  action  of  leading  persons.  It  is 
through  personal  influence  and  reaction  that  aes- 
thetic, scientific,  and  moral  ideals  prevail  in  the  social 
life.  It  is  chiefly  through  the  influence  of  great 
personahties  that  existing  scientific  theories  and 
political,  social,  aesthetic,  and  moral  ideals  are  origi- 
nated, enforced,  and  transformed,  that  new  ones 
arise  and  become  efficient  factors  in  the  life  of  culture. 
It  is  sufficient  in  this  connection  to  remind  the  reader 
of  the  influence  of  Plato,  Aristotle,  Descartes, 
Spinoza,  Kant,  and  Hegel  in  philosophy ;  of  Kepler, 
Newton,  and  Darwin  in  science :  of  Pericles,  Juhus 
Caesar,  Frederick  the  Great,  WiUiam  Pitt,  the  elder. 
Napoleon  I.,  etc.,  in  politics;  of  Socrates  and  the 
Hebrew  prophets,  of  Confucius  and  Luther  and 
Savonarola,  in  the  sphere  of  individual  and  social 
morality.  The  individual  Personality  is,  in  every 
sphere  of  man's  activity,  a  great  historical  cause. 


FOUNDERS   OF   RELIGIONS  1 83 

And  the  ideas  and  ideals  of  the  leading  individuals, 
to  become  effective,  must  call  forth  reactions  from  the 
multitude,  the  moving  mass  of  the  social  life.  It  is 
fashionable  nowadays  to  say  that  a  new  move- 
ment is  due  to  the  general  conditions  of  the  time, 
that  progress  in  science,  social  organization,  art,  and 
morals  results  from  the  convergence  of  general 
tendencies  that  in  some  mysterious  way  arise  and 
spread  over  human  society.  But,  in  truth,  these  so- 
called  general  tendencies  must  exist  and  act  in  a 
number  of  living  individuals  if  they  are  to  mean 
anything.  And  great  original  movements  never 
come  to  a  head  in  human  history  until  the  creative 
personality  is  found,  the  leader,  the  discoverer,  the 
revealer. 

All  this  is  true  in  a  preeminent  degree  in  religion 
—  the  highest  expression  of  man's  life  as  a  historical 
being.  The  most  vital,  enduring,  and  universal 
influences  in  religion  have  all  irradiated  from  great 
personalities.  What  are  known  as  the  universal  or 
ethical  religions  —  those  that  make  appeal  to  some 
ethical  and  spiritual  principle  or  need  that  exists 
universally  in  mankind  —  have  all  been  founded  by 
great  personalities.  Judaism  was  founded  by  Moses 
and  developed  by  the  great  prophets  of  Israel. 
Mohammedanism,  devoid  though  it  be  of  original 
elements,  made  its  universal  appeal  through  the  in- 
fluence of  its  founder.  The  primal  vitality  of  Bud- 
dhism lay  mainly  in  the  influence  of  Gotama 
Buddha.    And  this  relation  between  the  Personal 


184      JESUS    CHRIST    AND    CIVILIZATION    OF   TO-DAY 

Founder  and  his  historical  work  and  influence  is  true 
in  a  supreme  degree  of  Christianity. 

Of  course,  the  personal  founders  of  great  religions 
have  always  taught  and  acted  primarily  with  refer- 
ence to  the  reHgious  conditions  of  their  own  time  and 
people.  There  has  been  always  a  local  and  temporal 
element  in  their  work.  Since  human  personaHty 
is  developed  and  lived  out  under  specific  social  and 
historical  conditions,  the  founder  of  a  new  religion 
must  find  a  vital  point  of  contact  with  the  moral  and 
rehgious  traditions  and  social  conditions  of  his  own 
day  and  his  own  people.  His  universal  appeal 
must  find  its  way  through  a  particular  set  of  national 
and  local  circumstances,  his  eternal  message  must 
be  revealed  under  temporal  conditions.  But  these 
particular  local  and  temporal  conditions  may  be,  and 
indeed  always  have  been  in  the  history  of  religion, 
typical  of  some  phase  or  aspect  of  man's  spiritual 
growth.  And  so,  dealing  in  an  original  manner  with 
typical  or  generally  significant  spiritual  conditions  of 
life,  the  ethical  and  religious  teachings  of  Moses  and 
the  Hebrew  prophets,  of  Mohammed  and  Buddha, 
have  gained  universal  significance. 

One  universally  significant  feature  of  the  work  of 
the  personal  founders  of  religion  has  been  their 
simplification  and  unification  of  existing  spiritual 
ideas.  Buddha  simpHfied  the  world-weary  pessi- 
mistic pantheism,  with  its  speculative  negation  of  the 
individual,  which  underlay  the  confused  religious 
and  speculative  ideas  of  the  Hindu.      Mohammed 


FOUNDERS   OF   RELIGIONS  1 85 

simplified  the  confused  polytheism  and  spiritism  of 
the  Arabs.  The  Hebrew  prophets  gave  grand  and 
simple  expression  to  the  reHgious  background  and 
basis  of  social  ethics.  And,  lastly,  Jesus  Christ,  in 
freeing  men  from  the  burdensome  and  elaborate 
legalism  of  post-exilic  Judaism,  simplified,  while  he 
deepened  and  sweetened,  men's  sense  of  their  re- 
lationship to  God.  He  freed  the  subHme  ethical 
elements  in  Hebrew  religion  from  their  narrow 
national  limitations  and  gave  them  universal  expres- 
sion. And  hence,  in  the  religion  of  Jesus,  the  appeal 
is  made  to  the  individual,  the  single  person  is  re- 
deemed and  uplifted  irrespective  of  race,  community, 
and  circumstances.* 

The  personal  founder  of  a  religion,  then,  speaks 
directly  under  the  influence  of  and  with  reference  to 
local  and  temporal  historical  conditions.  But  the 
test  of  his  abiding  influence  lies  in  his  personal 
revelation  of  the  universal  and  eternal  in  the  spiritual 
capacity  and  aspiration  of  man. 

(2)  Jesus,  Mohammed,  and  Buddha  in  History 

At  the  present  time  there  seems  to  be  only  one  re- 
ligion, centring  in  a  great  historical  personality,  that 
can  claim,  with  any  show  of  reason,  to  be  a  rival 
of  Christianity,  and  that  is  Buddhism.  Mohamme- 
danism may  be  left   out  of  account.    Although  a 

^  I  am  indebted  for  suggestions  in  regard  to  the  process  of 
simplification  in  religious  progress  to  W.  Bousset,  Das  Wesen  der 
Religion. 


1 86      JESUS    CHRIST    AND   CIVILIZATION    OF    TO-DAY 

universal  or  world-religion,  it  is  not  now,  and  ap- 
parently has  never  been,  an  originative  and  creative 
jorce  in  the  spiritual  progress  of  civilization.  Able  to 
unify  and  absorb  scattered  tribes  into  empires,  able 
to  assimilate  a  foreign  culture,  Mohammedan  civili- 
zation lacks  spontaneity  and,  except  where  stimu- 
lated by  western  influences,  as  in  Egypt  and  India 
to-day,  its  development  is  soon  arrested  and  decay 
sets  in.  The  weakness  and  the  power  of  Moham- 
medanism as  a  moral  force  both  lie  in  its  elaborated 
legalism.  It  sprang  full  armed  from  its  founder  as 
a  fixed  code  of  social  ethics,  law,  or  jurisprudence, 
and  politics.  It  is  a  rigid,  inelastic  system  that  does 
not  give  free  play  and  stimulus  to  the  spirit  of 
personality.  Consequently,  wide-reaching  and  be- 
neficent though  its  influence  may  have  been,  in 
uplifting  races  from  utter  barbarism  and  crude 
superstition,  from  fetichism  and  polytheism  in 
religion,  from  disorder,  confusion  and  rapine,  into 
social  order  and  some  degree  of  stability  and  equity 
in  the  administration  of  justice,  and  into  a  worship 
of  and  submission  to  the  will  of  one  God  that  devel- 
ops self-reliance  and  self-respect  in  the  believer, 
Mohammedanism  everywhere  has  stopped  at  the 
establishment  of  fixed  social  order  and  pohtical  unity. 
It  has  never  gone  forward  to  create  a  high  type  of 
spiritual  individualism  in  social  life,  morals,  and 
religion. 

Nowhere  on  Mohammedan  ground  has  the  moral 
and  legal  equality  of  men  and  women  been  recog- 


FOUNDERS   OF   RELIGIONS  187 

nized.  Nowhere  has  Islam  originated  a  genuine 
democracy.  Nowhere  has  it  given  birth  to  that  full 
recognition  of  the  freedom  and  worth  of  the  individ- 
ual personality,  which  is  the  most  valuable  principle 
of  western  civilization.  Consequently  we  find  in 
Islam  no  great  creative  culture  work  like  western 
science,  free  government,  or  social  democracy. 
Islam  for  a  time  assimilated  and  imitated  Greek 
science  and  philosophy,  but  it  made  no  great  original 
addition  thereto.  (It  is  not  to  be  forgotten  that  the 
brilHant  Caliphates  of  Bagdad  and  Cordova  which 
transmitted  Greek  learning  to  the  Christian  Middle 
Ages  were  founded  on  tyranny  and  terrorism,  as- 
sassination and  oppression.  Harun  al  Raschid  de- 
stroyed to  a  man  his  great  ministers,  the  Barmecides.) 
Mohammed,  its  founder,  was  undoubtedly  an 
honest,  earnest,  and  deeply  rehgious  man  with  many 
fine  traits  of  character;  affectionate,  loyal  to  his 
friends,  compassionate  toward  the  poor,  of  great 
moral  courage,  etc.  But  his  character  deteriorated 
with  worldly  success.  Whereas  at  Mecca,  when  under- 
going persecution,  he  said  that  religion  should  not  be 
imposed  by  force,  after  he  had  become  powerful  at 
Medina  he  propagated  his  religion  by  the  sword  and 
gained  his  marvellous  successes  by  a  singular  and 
shrewd  intermingling  of  religious  zeal  with  promises 
of  earthly  gains  and  sensuous  delights  for  the 
warriors  who  survived  the  field  of  battle;  and 
for  those  who  perished,  still  greater  bliss  in  Para- 
dise, in  green  valleys  with  rivers   flowing  through 


1 88      JESUS    CHRIST    AND    CIVILIZATION   OF    TO-DAY 

them  and  goodly  numbers  of  houris  to  delight  them.* 
Beginning  with  the  proclamation  of  an  ardent 
monotheism  presumably  derived  from  Jewish  sources 
and  well- fitted  to  uplift  his  countrymen  from  their 
base  polytheism,  Mohammed  developed  into  a  con- 
queror, statesman,  and  legislator.  Herein  lies  the 
secret  at  once  of  his  success  and  failure.  His 
empire  is  bound  up  with  a  particular  and  inferior 
phase  of  civilization.  His  ethics  have  many  fine 
features  in  their  insistence  on  justice  to  widow  and 
orphans,  simpHcity  of  life,  almsgiving,  patience,  ab- 
stention from  gambling,  etc.;  but  they  sanction 
the  principle  of  retaHation  of  injuries  and  their 
conception  of  woman  is  low.  Above  all,  the 
spiritual  and  the  ceremonial  are  confused.  Prayer 
and  almsgiving  are  rigorous  matters  of  ceremonial 
piety.  In  short,  Mohammed's  ethics  are  legaHstic, 
formal,  without  inherent  power  of  progress.  Church 
and  state  are  one,  law  and  ceremony  and  right  con- 
duct are  not  distinguished.  Scope  is  not  given  for 
the  development  of  inwardness,  of  a  free  and  rational 
spiritual  life.  From  Mohammed  was  hidden  the 
secret  of  true  ethical  progress  —  the  Divine  Sonship 
of  man  grounded  on  God's  infinite  Love.  Where 
law  and  spirit,  the  outer  and  the  inner,  legal  institution 
and  personaHty  are  confused,  the  mainspring  of  the 
higher  movements  of  civilization  is  absent.     Syed 

^  Modem  Mohammedan  rationalism  explains  these  away  as 
purely  symbolical.  But  they  are  too  frequently  reiterated  in  the 
Koran  and  too  consistent  with  the  Prophet's  practice  to  be  so  easily 
shelved. 


FOUNDERS   OF   RELIGIONS  1 89 

Ameer  Ali  says  in  his  Life  of  Mohammed  ^  that  the 
"work  of  Jesus  was  left  unfinished.  It  was  reserved 
for  another  teacher  to  systematize  the  laws  (italics 
mine)  of  morality"  (p.  185).  Herein  this  interesting 
advocate  of  Islam  shows  his  entire  misconception  of 
the  meaning  of  Jesus'  work,  a  misconception  which  is 
indeed  shared  by  some  Christians.  Jesus  never  aimed 
to  give  a  system  of  laws  for  morality,  much  less  for 
ceremonial  piety.  And,  again,  the  same  author  says, 
in  the  fact  of  Mohammed's  "whole  work  being 
achieved  during  his  Hfetime  lies  his  distinctive 
superiority  over  prophets,  sages,  and  philosophers 
of  other  times  and  countries"  (p.  150).  On  the 
contrary  from  the  standpoint  of  the  philosophy  of 
historical  progress,  of  the  growth  of  culture  in  in- 
wardness and  power  through  the  movement  of 
personality,  this  fact  is  precisely  evidence  of  the  vast 
inferiority  of  Mohammed's  work  to  that  of  Jesus. 
The  full  accomplishment  and  the  all-comprehensive- 
ness of  his  work  mean,  in  Mohammed's  case,  a  limit 
set  on  development,  through  the  confusion  of  the  local 
and  temporal  with  that  spirit  in  man  which  moves 
ever  toward  a  higher  perfection,  i.e.  Mohammedan- 
ism confused  the  personal  and  spiritual  with  the  legal 
and  external  elements  of  civiHzation. 

Indeed  the  entire  ethical  and  religious  code  of 
Mohammed  seems  but  a  recrudescence  and  applica- 
tion of  Judaism  with  the  greater  prophetic  elements 
left  out.     His  ethical  system  falls  below  the  teachings 

1  London,  Williams  and  Norgate,  1873. 


190      JESUS   CHRIST    AND    CIVILIZATION    OF    TO-DAY 

of  Isaiah  and  Amos,  Hosea  and  Jeremiah.  His 
knowledge  of  Christianity  was  evidently  derived  from 
very  distorted  sources ;  indeed,  some  of  the  stories 
related  about  Jesus  in  the  Koran  are  to  be  found  in 
apocryphal  gospels  of  the  Infancy,  notably  the  so- 
called  first  gospel  of  the  Infancy,  first  translated 
into  English  by  Henry  Sike  in  1697.^ 

The  only  remaining  world-religion  that  offers 
serious  rivalry  to  Christianity  is  Buddhism.  Not- 
vidthstanding  the  central  place  occupied  in  the  purer 
forms  of  Buddhism  by  the  personality  of  Gotama 
Buddha,  it  is  extremely  difficult,  owing  to  the  lack 
in  Hindu  literature  of  that  historical  sense  for  in- 
dividuality, for  the  unique  lineaments,  deeds,  and 
fates  of  personalities  which  distinguishes  western 
literature,  to  construct  from  the  maze  of  tradition 
a  clear  picture  of  the  personality,  work,  and  teach- 
ing of  Gotama  Buddha.  Herman  Oldenberg,^  has 
clearly  shown,  however,  that  such  a  personage  must 
have  existed.  The  traditions  present,  as  Olden- 
berg  says,  in  Gotama's  case,  a  type  of  ancient  Bud- 
dhist life;  now  since  this  typical  or  unindividual 
quality  is  at  once  so  characteristic  of  Indian  life,  and, 
since  the  period  between  Buddha  and  the  fixing  of 
the  tradition  or  the  canon  of  Buddhist  scriptures 

^  My  chief  authorities  for  Mohammedanism  are  the  Koran, 
Sir  William  Muir's  Life  of  Mahomet  (London,  1894),  the  above- 
mentioned  work  of  Ameer  Ali,  Bosworth  Smith's  Mohammed, 
the  articles  in  the  Encyclopedia  Britannica,  etc. 

2  Buddha,  his  Life  his  Doctrine  his  Order,  English  translation, 
Ix)ndon,  1882. 


FOUNDERS    OF    RELIGIONS  I91 

was  entirely  deficient  in  minds  great  enough  to  give 
a  new  direction  to  the  great  movement,  we  are 
entitled  to  assume  that  we  have  at  least  a  fairly 
accurate  account  of  his  work  and  teaching,  although 
he  may  have  had  many  striking  traits  which  are  lost 
through  the  absence  in  the  Hindu  mind  of  a  feeling 
for  the  individual  and  historical. 

Moreover,  when  we  approach  the  Buddhist 
tradition  in  this  way,  we  find  a  new  and  fairly  con- 
sistent ethical  or  practical  teaching  that  is  neverthe- 
less in  harmony  with  the  impersonal  pantheism  and 
abstract  intellectualism  so  characteristic  of  pre- 
Buddhistic  Hindu  thought,  i.e.  of  Brahmanism  as  it 
is  found  in  the  Vedas  and  Upanishads.  Buddhism 
is  a  normal  and  legitimate  product  of  Vedantic 
philosophy.^     Buddha's  career  began,  like  that   of 

^  The  fundamental  thought  of  this  philosophy  is  tliat  the  only 
reality  is  the  world-soul  (Brahma).  Brahma  is  in  every  soul  or 
dtman  and  the  reality  of  the  soul  is  not  th^tof  a  separate  individ- 
uality or  personality.  All  that  appears  to  separate  the  soul  from 
Brahma  is  illusion.  Brahma  is  beyond  consciousness  as  this 
exists  in  man.  Brahma  is  the  indifference-point  of  self  and  world, 
the  abstract  unity  of  subject  and  object.  In  Brahma  all  separate 
selves  and  particular  existences  collapse  into  a  featureless,  formless, 
indescribable  unity.  The  goal  of  human  existence  is  to  be 
merged  in  an  all-one  in  which  all  distinctions  are  lost.  It  may 
not  be  amiss  to  remark  here  on  the  resemblance  between  this  ul- 
timate and  Absolute  of  ancient  Hindu  speculation  and  the  Absolute 
of  Spinoza,  of  Schelling  (which  Hegel  described  as  shot  out  of  a 
pistol)  and  the  unknowable  Reality  of  Herbert  Spencer.  We  are 
often  told  that  the  Hindus  are  our  masters  in  metaphysics.  If 
the  only  logical  goal  of  metaphysics  be  a  denial  of  individuality^ 
which  involves  the  assumption  that  man's  history  and  the  manifold 
activities  of  human  culture  are  vain  illusions,  this  is  true.    But 


192       JESUS    CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

the  traditional  Hindu  mendicant  monk  who  sought 
illumination  and  salvation,  by  withdrawal  from  the 
world,  by  renunciation  of  social  ties,  by  ascetic  prac- 
tices, and  by  meditation  and  speculation.  Buddha's 
first  departure  from  the  traditional  way  was  his 
discovery  that  neither  by  self-mortification  nor  pure 
speculation  could  one  attain  dehverance.  The 
distinguishing  characteristic  of  ancient  Brahman- 
ism  was  that  one  attained  the  goal  of  salvation  by 
an  intellectual  process  that  ended  in  complete  ab- 
straction from  concrete  experience  and  individuafity. 
This  withdrawal  from  actuafities  into  a  realm  of 


if  metaphysics  must  be  based  on  historical  experience  and  draw 
its  inspiration  from  the  entire  social  and  spiritual  life  of  human 
culture,  then  the  Hindus  are  emphatically  not  our  masters.  At  the 
risk  of  evoking  a  sneer  from  the  devotees  of  an  abstract  absolute,  I 
venture  to  assert  that  genuine  and  indigenous  western  metaphysics, 
founded  on  the  experiences  of  Greek  and  Christian  civilization,  and 
drawing  its  materials  and  inspiration  from  the  development  of 
free  individuality  and  democracy,  has  nothing  to  learn  from 
Hindu  speculation.  The  whole  future  of  western  civilization 
demands  the  repudiation  of  the  monastic  intellectuaHsm,  the 
impersonal  pantheism,  of  ancient  India.  (India  to-day  is  being 
revived  by  the  touch  of  another  and  alien  life.)  There  can  be  no 
compromise  between  the  democratic  and  historical  philosophy 
of  the  West,  carrying  inductive  science  in  its  train,  and  the  phi- 
losophy of  an  abstract  absolute,  whether  presented  in  ancient  or 
modem  guise.  Christianity  and  the  democratic  state  stand  or  fall 
with  the  victory  or  defeat  of  a  philosophy  and  theology  based  on 
inductive  science  and  history. 

The  leading  authority-for  ancient  Hindu  philosophy  is  Paul 
Deussen,  Allgemeine  Geschichte  der  Philosophie,  Band  I.  and  II. 
Volimie  II.,  'The  Philosophy  of  the  Upanishads,*  is  now  translated 
into  English,  I  believe. 


FOUNDERS   OF   RELIGIONS  1 93 

pure  thought  is  characteristic,  too,  of  the  final  goal 
of  Buddha's  teaching.  But  the  latter  has  ethical 
elements  of  which  previous  Hindu  rehgious  thought 
was  partly  void,  and  it  is  the  ethical  and  practical 
side  that  is  of  interest  to  us  in  comparison  with  the 
teaching  of  Jesus.  I  shall  do  no  more  here  than 
make  a  very  brief  comparison.  For  the  filling  out  of 
this  outline  the  reader  must  consult  the  standard 
works  in  the  history  of  religion.  The  resemblances 
between  the  career  of  Gotama  Buddha  and  of  Jesus 
Christ  are  so  very  obvious  as  to  lie  on  the  surface 
of  comparative  history. 

They  both  devote  themselves  to  showing  men  a 
way  of  redemption  from  the  ills  of  Hfe.  Through  the 
teachings  of  both  there  runs  a  sharp  contrast  be- 
tween the  merely  worldly  Kfe  and  the  Hfe  of  spiritual 
self-control  and  peace.  In  the  way  of  redemption 
laid  down  by  both  there  is  involved  as  the  primary 
condition  of  salvation  an  overcoming  of  the  world 
and  of  the  lower  self. 

Buddha,  Hke  Christ,  demands  purity  of  heart. 
Buddha  teaches  that  the  way  to  the  cessation  of 
suffering  is  the  treading  of  the  eightfold  path  of  right 
belief,  right  aspiration,  right  conduct,  right  means 
of  livelihood,  right  endeavour,  right  memory,  right 
desire.  Buddha  lays  down  five  rules  binding  on 
all  adherents,  monastic  and  lay  alike.  These  rules 
are,  (i)  not  to  kill  any  Hving  being,  (2)  not  to  take 
that  which  is  not  given,  (3)  to  refrain  from  adultery, 
(4)  to  speak  no  untruth,  (5)  to  abstain  from  intoxi- 


194      JESUS   CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

eating  liquors.  The  emphasis  on  inward  purity 
or  Tightness  of  desires  and  rightness  of  insight  re- 
minds one  sharply  of  Jesus'  words,  "Blessed  are  the 
pure  in  heart,"  and  of  that  emphasis  on  inwardness 
and  genuineness  that  characterize  his  whole  teaching. 
But  when  we  look  deeper,  we  shall  find  the  differ- 
ences still  more  striking  than  the  resemblances. 
The  basis  of  Buddha's  teaching  is  absolute  pessi- 
mism. Life  is  suffering  and  it  is  by  an  intellectual 
insight  that  man  is  to  be  redeemed,  not  from  sin 
or  selfishness,  but  from  suffering.  And  the  root  of 
his  doctrine  of  salvation  lies  in  the  four  noble  truths : 
(i)  That    suffering    is    the    clinging   to    existence. 

(2)  That  the  cause  of  suffering  is  desire  or  appetite. 

(3)  That  the  cessation  of  suffering  is  to  be  gained 
through  the  abolition  of  desire.  (4)  That  this  aboli- 
tion is  to  be  obtained  through  the  eightfold  path 
already  mentioned. 

The  secret  of  Buddha's  personal  influence  con- 
sisted in  his  sympathy  with  human  suffering,  and  his 
resolve  to  remove  it.  But  his  method  of  salvation 
is  essentially  negative.  It  consists  in  the  absolute 
denial  of  individual  existence,  the  negation  of  the 
individual  or  personal  soul.  All  existence  is  tran- 
sitory and  evil  and,  because  of  the  endless  chain  of 
causal  connection  in  the  world,  in  which  the  indi- 
vidual soul  is  enmeshed,  there  can  be  no  salvation 
except  by  the  absolute  abohtion  of  the  individual. 
Individuality  is  to  be  rooted  out  by  the  total  aboHtion 
of   desire.     But    Gotama    accepts    the    Brahmanic 


FOUNDERS   OF   RELIGIONS  1 95 

doctrine  of  Samsara  and  of  Karma  according  to 
which  the  individual  is  dependent  in  character  and 
destiny  on  the  deeds  of  former  individuals,  and  is 
the  reincarnation,  not  indeed,  as  Buddha  conceives 
the  doctrine,  of  a  previous  single  individual,  but  of 
a  group  of  qualities  of  previous  individuals.*  Buddha 
is  a  nihilist  in  regard  to  the  soul  and  to  all  individual- 
ity. There  is  no  soul.  "Constituent  parts  alone 
roll  on"  and  the  grasping  of  the  constituent  elements 
of  being  means  the  cessation  of  desire  and  of  rebirth.^ 
The  consideration  of  all  elements  of  being  as  not  an 
ego  is  one  of  the  three  starting-points  of  deliverance. 
The  goal  Nirvana^  although  hard  to  describe  or 
conceive  and  presumably  left  purposely  vague  in 
Buddha's  own  teaching,  is  certainly  the  abolition 
of  individuahty.  Nirvana  is  a  state  of  desiring 
nothing  and  thinking  nothing  attained  by  renun- 
ciation and  meditation.  If  it  be  not  the  negation 
of  all  being,  it  is  certainly  the  negation  of  desire  and 
activity,  and  it  is  difficult  to  see  what  meaning,  if 
any,  can  be  attached  to  consciousness  or  spiritual 
being  when  the  individual  life  has  faded  away  in 

^  Rhys-Davids,  Buddhism,  Hihhert  Lectures,  Lect.  III. 

2  H.  C.  Warren,  Buddhism  in  Translation,  pp.  333-334,  34^  and 
377.  Buddha  is  said  to  have  repeatedly  taught  that  the  cause  of 
rebirth  was  ignorance  and  the  accompanying  desire  for  individ- 
uality. The  "  constituent  parts"  or  "elements,"  Sankharas  (trans- 
lated in  German  'Gestaltungen'),  are  the  unceasing  chain  of  causes 
and  effects,  or  actions  and  consequences,  in  which  an  individual 
is  enmeshed  until  he  overcomes  desire  and  gains  insight  into  the 
impermanency  of  being. 


196      JESUS    CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

the  absolute  All  which  is  itself  devoid  of  positive 
quality  or  activity.^ 

Buddhism  is  essentially  negative.  It  denies  the 
reality  of  the  individual  spirit  as  well  as  of  the  world. 
Its  basis  is  absolute  pessimism.  It  compasses  the 
redemption  of  the  individual  through  stripping  off 
individuahty.  The  ego  is  freed  from  suffering  by 
ceasing  to  be  an  ego,  by  denying  the  world  and  learn- 
ing to  regard  it  as  non-existent.  Its  ethics  are  monas- 
tic and  speculative.     FHght  from  the  world  is  the 

^  Buddha  seems,  so  far  as  one  can  judge  from  translations,  to 
have  decHned  to  decide  or  pronounce  whether  Nirvana  or  Nibbana 
was  a  state  of  being  or  non-being.  But  it  seems  clear  that  it  is  a 
total  negation  of  personality.  The  soul  "  is  only  a  heap  of  Sank- 
hS,ras:  here  there  is  not  a  person."  Oldenberg,  op.cU.,  p.  270. 
As,  perhaps,  an  accommodation  to  the  lay  mind,  Buddha  does  not 
categorically  assert  that  Nirvana  is  the  utter  extinction  of  con- 
sciousness. Rhys-Davids  {Buddhism,  Hihhert  Lectures  for  1881, 
and  Americajt  Lectures  on  Buddhism)  gives  it  a  positive  char- 
acter. He  calls  it  simply  rest,  calm,  the  peace  that  passeth 
understanding.  I  do  not  find  that  any  other  notable  western 
scholar  shares  this  view.  Perhaps  Oldenberg' s  statement  is 
the  nearest  approach  we  can  make  to  the  original  meaning. 
"For  the  Buddhist  the  words  'there  is  an  uncreated'  merely 
signify  that  the  created  can  free  himself  from  the  curse  of  being 
created  —  there  is  a  path  from  the  world  of  the  created  out  into 
dark  endlessness.  Does  the  path  lead  to  a  new  existence?  Does 
it  lead  into  the  Nothing?  The  Buddhist  creed  rests  in  delicate 
equipoise  between  the  two.  The  longing  of  the  heart  that  craves 
the  eternal  has  not  nothing,  and  yet  the  thought  has  not  a 
something,  which  it  might  firmly  grasp.  .  .  .  Farther  off  the 
idea  of  the  endless,  the  eternal  could  not  withdraw  itself  from  be- 
lief than  it  has  done  here,  where,  like  a  gentle  flutter  on  the  point 
of  merging  in  the  Nothing,  it  threatens  to  evade  the  gaze  "  {pp.  cit. 
p.  284). 


FOUNDERS    OF   RELIGIONS  1 97 

goal  and,  although  sympathy,  helpfulness,  and  ten- 
derness are  enjoined,  it  is  in  a  spirit  of  comparative 
coldness.  There  is  no  flaming  passion  for  these 
things  such  as  breathes  through  the  New  Testa- 
ment; and,  indeed,  there  could  not  be,  since  all 
active  well-doing  is  in  Buddhism  only  preparatory 
and  preliminary  to  the  higher  stage  of  withdrawal 
from  the  world.  The  Bodhisatva,  i.e.  the  seeker 
after  Buddhaship,  the  "Buddha-elect,"  will  prac- 
tise these  active  virtues,  but  the  Buddha  who  has 
attained  the  state  of  pure  contemplation  and  peace 
is  beyond  them.  The  consequence  of  this  attitude 
is  the  slight  value  attached  to  social  relationships  and 
moral  activities  in  the  world  of  men.  There  is  an 
absence  of  a  positive  f eeHng  of  obligation,  a  contempt 
for  work,  for  woman,  and  for  all  the  conditions  of  the 
earthly  life.^ 

Work  in  the  world  of  men  and  the  morals  that 
develop  therefrom  lie  far  out  on  the  periphery,  in 
the  realm  of  matters  that  are  well-nigh  indifferent. 
The  seeker  after  enlightenment  leaves  these  morals 
behind  him,  since  he  passes  far  beyond  the  life  with 
which  they  are  concerned.  Hence  Buddhism  as 
such  is  devoid  of  any  principle  of  progress.  It  has 
no  real  history  and  no  room  for  the  positive  growth 
of  the  individual  person,  in  depth  of  life  and  width 
of  social  relationship. 

This  negative  relation  of  Buddhism  to  work  in 

^  Edv.  Lehmann  in  Chantepie  de  la  Saussaye,  Lehrbuch  der 
Religions geschichtey  Zweite  auflage,  Bd.  II.,  p.  98. 


198      JESUS    CHRIST   AND    CIVILIZATION  OF   TO-DAY 

the  world,  to  social  life  and  the  manifold  activities 
of  civiHzation,  accounts  for  the  readiness  with  which, 
in  the  course  of  its  spread  among  the  peoples  of  the 
Far  East,  it  accepted  aHen  moral  elements  and 
adopted,  without  transforming,  indigenous  religious 
practices  and  beliefs;  and  hence,  in  consequence, 
for  its  failure  to  preserve  its  original  and  distinctive 
characteristics  in  the  face  of  firmly  entrenched  na- 
tional ethical  and  reHgious  systems.  Buddhist 
India  succumbed  to  Mohammedan  onslaughts. 
Buddhism  plays  a  very  feeble  role  in  Hindu  culture 
and  religion  to-day.  It  has  been  reabsorbed  into  the 
speculative  pantheism  from  which  it  originated.  In 
the  popular  life  it  has  vanished  to  give  place  to  an 
animistic  polytheism.  Buddhism  has  almost  totally 
lost  its  original  features  in  the  Lamaism  of  Thibet 
and  even  in  Nepal,  its  original  home.^  Almost  all 
that  remains  is  the  world-weary  monasticism. 
Nirvana  fades  into  the  distance  or  is  treated  as  an 
illusion.  Here  is  an  elaborate  hierarchy  and  cere- 
monial with  gods  galore  and  a  material  Heaven  and 
Hell.  In  Ceylon  and  to  a  greater  degree  in  Burma, 
if  Mr.  H.  Fielding  may  be  trusted,^  there  is  a  strong 
leaven  of  original  Buddhism. 

*  Northern  Buddhism  is  based  on  the  so-called  Mahay^na  or 
Greater  Vehicle,  a  complex  blending  of  fantastic  metaphysics  and 
speculations  upon  all  sorts  of  things  with  magical  ceremonies  and 
the  apotheosis  of  Buddha.  Buddha  is  made  the  head  of  a  pantheon, 
and  the  dividing  line  between  monks  and  laity  becomes  indistinct 
or  disappears. 

2  The  Soul  of  a  People. 


FOUNDERS   OF   RELIGIONS  1 99 

The  Buddhism  of  China/  with,  its  worship  of  reHcs 
and  idols,  its  goddess  of  mercy,  Kwan-yin,  the  incar- 
nation of  a  Bodhisatva  or  Buddha-elect,  Avalokites- 
vara  by  name ;  its  great  god  Amit^bha  or  Amita,  the 
eternal  and  infinitely  glorious,  who  is  lord  of  the  west- 
em  paradise ;  its  material  hell  before  which  Dante's 
Inferno  pales  into  mildness,  would  surely  not  be 
recognized  at  all  by  Gotama.  Its  repetition  of 
magic  formulas  by  which  the  gate  of  paradise  is 
opened,  the  easy  conditions  for  the  use  of  this  mas- 
ter-key, the  strict  book-keeping  of  the  faithful  with 
his  gods,  etc.,  etc. ;  all  these  things  are  the  opposite 
of  Gotama's  method  of  self-salvation  by  sheer 
philosophical  reflection  and  the  extinction  of 
desire. 

In  China  Buddhism,  already  far  removed  from 
its  original  simplicity,  came  in  contact  with  a  long- 
estabhshed  code  of  social  ethics,  whose  fundamental 
feature  was  filial  piety  and  whose  whole  system 
embraced  only  the  five  mundane  social  relationships 
of  Emperor  and  subject,  father  and  son,  husband 
and  wife,  younger  brother  and  elder  brother,  friend 
and  friend ;  a  system  admirably  adapted  to  preserve 
in  harmonious  equipoise  a  social  and  political  code 
of  venerable  antiquity  and  woven  into  the  very  life- 
blood  of  the  people;  but  a  system  which  gave  no 
stimulus  to  progress  and  offered  no  scope  to  indi- 
viduality, since  in  it  the  individual  person  is  swal- 

^  Compare  S.  Beal's  Buddhism  in  China.  Other  references  will 
be  found  in  Chantepie  de  la  Saussaye,  op.  cit.,  Vol.  II.,  p.  113  ff. 


200      JESUS   CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

lowed  up  in  the  social  relations  of  family,  clan,  com- 
munity, and  nation.^  In  China,  the  family  and  even 
the  clan  and  community  are  responsible  for  the  mis- 
deeds of  individual  members.  Higher  officials  are  re- 
sponsible for  the  misdemeanours  of  lower  officials, 
etc.  In  fact  somebody  else  seems  to  be  always  re- 
sponsible. Confucianism  is  a  system  of  purely 
utilitarian  social  and  civic  ethics.  It  formulates 
and  codifies  the  principles  of  social  life  indigenous 
to  an  ancient  and  isolated  civilization.  It  is  clear, 
practical,  prosaic,  and  unyielding.^  It  sets  up  no 
ideal  of  a  spiritual  perfection  that  lies  beyond  the 
routine  of  moral  custom  and  convention;  it  stirs 
up  no  feeling  of  transcendent  personal  responsi- 
bilities. It  lacks  entirely  the  element  of  aspiration 
and  personal  progress  which  comes  only  with  the 
faith  in  an  infinitely  exalted  and  perfect  Divine 
Being  in  whom  resides  that  principle  of  personality 
of  which  the  possibility  is  latent  in  the  individual 
man. 

It  is  true  that  Lao-Tsze,  contemporaneous  with 
Confucius,  taught  the  golden  rule;  and  it  is  very 
significant,  when  taken  in  connection  with  his  ele- 
vated ethical  teaching,  that  Lao-Tsze  emphasized 
the  dependence  of  all  things  on  a  transcendent 
Reason;  but  this  **  Reason"  or  ''Way"  was  abstract 
and  impersonal.     It  did  not  stimulate  the  individual 

^Compare  Williams,  The  Middle  Kingdom;  Douglas,  Society 
in  China;   Smith,  Chinese  Characteristics,  etc. 

^  Compare  Douglas,  Conjucianism  and  Taoism,  etc. 


FOUNDERS  OF   RELIGIONS  201 

with  a  quickening  and  encouraging  sense  of  kinship 
with  the  Perfect  in  the  very  midst  of  imperfection. 
Consequently,  Lao-Tsze's  teaching  was  devoid  of 
any  power  of  appeal  to  men  in  general.  Modem 
Taoism  has  nothing  in  common  with  the  teaching 
of  the  "old  philosopher."  It  is  a  system  of  f etichism, 
magic,  and  divination.  Buddhism,  with  its  vague 
aspiration  and  its  promise  of  a  realm  of  eternal  peace 
beyond  the  ordinary  affairs  of  life  in  the  world  and 
society,  with  its  promise  of  redemption  into  Nirvana, 
spread  in  China  because  it,  in  a  measure,  satisfied 
the  inexpugnable  longing  for  an  ideal  and  trans- 
cendent realm  of  existence  which  one  finds  every- 
where in  the  human  race.  Those  who  were  dis- 
satisfied with  the  outward  show  of  things,  with  the 
conventional  round  of  commonplace  existence,  and 
those  who  were  weary  of  the  struggle  of  life,  sought 
satisfaction  by  a  renunciation  which  carried  them 
away  from  self  and  the  world  and  promised  absolute 
peace.  But,  since  this  peace  was  attained  by  com- 
plete denial  of  the  world  and  withdrawal  from  the 
common  activities  of  life.  Buddhism  is  in  China, 
as  everywhere,  at  best  an  unhistorical  and  unsocial 
mysticism  that  is  powerless  to  influence  society  at 
large  and  that  initiates  no  new  movements  of  civili- 
zation and  gives  no  fresh  impulses  toward  progress 
in  humane  culture.  For  such  new  impulses  origi- 
nate always  in  the  spirit  of  the  individual  working 
in  society.  Where  the  social  and  historical  prin- 
ciple of  personality  is  ignored,  no  constant  progress 


202      JESUS   CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION  OF   TO-DAY 

is  possible.  And  the  growth  of  humane  culture  at 
its  highest  terms,  i.e.  where  it  ceases  to  be  impelled 
merely  by  physical  constraints,  by  the  needs  and 
appetites  of  the  physical  and  biological  order,  de- 
pends on  the  feeling  and  conviction  of  the  inherent 
and  infinite  significance  of  personality. 

A  great  and  ancient  empire  like  China,  isolated 
from  the  forces  which  stir  up  and  strengthen  this 
sense  of  the  infinite  meaning  of  personality,  and,  by 
its  inertia,  resisting  and  absorbing  the  inundations  of 
barbarians,  in  the  natural  course  of  events  arrives 
at  a  reasonably  stable  social  order.  It  develops  the 
arts  and  industries  so  far  as  to  minister  to  the  de- 
mands of  natural  existence;  and,  then,  stands  still 
or  retrogrades  for  want  of  a  transcendent  moral  or 
spiritual  impulse  working  in  the  individual,  and 
through  him  on  society.* 

It  is  sometimes  argued  that  Japan  owes  her  great- 
ness to  Buddhism  because  civilization  came  in  with 
Buddhism  from  China.  But  it  is  forgotten  that  it 
was  Buddhism  plus  Confucianism  that  brought  the 
rudiments  of  civilization  to  Japan.  The  latter 
adopted  Confucian  social  ethics.  Under  the  in- 
fluence of  the  long  period  of  feudalism  in  Japan 
loyalty  was  inserted  as  the  keystone  of  conduct  in  the 

*  It  is  the  well-nigh  unanimous  testimony  of  careful  students  of 
Chinese  civilization  that  the  administration  of  law  in  China  is  very 
corrupt,  that  intellectual  and  moral  life  there  is  wrapped  in  im- 
memorial stagnation;  and  no  purely  native  impulses  towards 
progress  are  discernible. 


FOUNDERS   OF   RELIGIONS  203 

ethics  of  the  Samurai  in  the  place  of  filial  piety, ^ 
although  the  latter  virtue  was  given  almost  equal 
prominence  and,  indeed,  the  absolute  loyalty  and 
obedience  of  the  warrior  to  his  Lord  was  a  form  of 
filial  piety. 

Chinese  Buddhism,  entering  Japan,  foimd  there 
a  people  in  the  stage  of  primitive  civiHzation,  indeed 
almost  in  barbarism.  Already  a  fully  organized 
and  equipped  ecclesiastical  system  which  had  en- 
tered China,  bringing  with  it  Hindu  letters,  art,  and 
speculation,  and  which  had  further  adopted  into 
its  own  system  the  moral  and  social  features  of  Chi- 
nese civilization,  Buddhism  introduced  art  and  letters 
into  Japan.  It  promoted  the  establishment  of 
a  literary  language,  developed  an  ecclesiastical 
architecture,  fostered  the  love  of  nature,  and,  to  some 
extent,  mitigated  the  horrors  of  war  and  softened 
manners  in  a  primitive  people.  But  the  activities 
of  culture,  planted  and  promoted  in  Japan  by  Chi- 
nese ecclesiastical  Buddhism,  were  not,  it  is  almost 
needless  to  say,  the  offspring  of  Buddhism  in  its 
original  form.  These  were  products  of  national 
genius  adopted  by  Buddhism  as  it  moved  along 
through  India,  China,  Corea,  and  Japan.  An  anal- 
ogy may  be  drawn  between  the  course  of  Buddhism 

^Compare  Nitobe,  Bushido;  Griffis,  The  Religions  oj  Japan; 
Okakura-Yoshisaburo,  The  Spirit  oj  Japan;  Knox,  Japanese 
Life  in  Town  and  Country  and  The  Development  of  Religion  in 
Japan;  Hearn,  Japan,  an  Interpretation;  Chamberlin,  Things 
Japanese. 


204      JESUS   CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

as  a  civilizing  agency  and  that  of  Christianity, 
which,  in  its  course,  adopted  Greek  and  Roman 
culture  and  suffered  great  transformations  in  the 
process.  But  the  analogy  is  very  imperfect.  Chris- 
tianity profoundly  modified,  indeed,  one  may  say 
it  gave  an  entirely  new  stamp  to,  western  culture. 
This  work  of  progressively  transforming  the  bases 
of  culture,  Christianity  still  carries  on  and  will  con- 
tinue in  the  future.  Not  so  with  Buddhism.  Enter- 
ing Japanese  life  and  carrying  with  it  the  external 
apparatus  of  civiHzation,  —  letters  and  art,  —  it 
did  not  transform  the  heart  of  Japan.  In  a  thou- 
sand ways  it  submitted  to  the  control  of  the  native 
impulses  of  the  people.  It  entered  political  life  and 
became  for  a  considerable  time  a  powerful  social 
and  even  military  influence.  But  it  did  not  produce 
a  radical  ethical  transformation.  It  did  not  build 
hospitals  for  human  beings  or  organize  charity. 
It  did  not  greatly  elevate  the  position  of  woman.  It 
did  not  free  the  individual  from  the  trammels  of  a 
communal  life  in  which  his  independent  worth  and 
dignity  were  not  recognized.  Japanese  feudalism  and 
Samurai  ethics  are  not  pure  and  legitimate  products 
of  Buddhism.  But  if  they  were,  that  would  not  con- 
stitute a  recommendation  of  Buddhism  to  the  modern 
world.  Much  as  one  may  admire  the  spirit  of  abso- 
lute loyalty  and  obedience  to  family,  clan,  nation, 
and  emperor  which  is  embodied  in  so  many  Japanese 
tales,  that  is  not  the  spirit  which  makes  for  genuine 
human  progress  to-day.     The  future  of  humanity 


FOUNDERS   OF   RELIGIONS  205 

belongs  to  those  for  whom  the  individual  soul  is 
sacred  beyond  all  political  and  social  conventions 
and  ties.  Not  until  there  is  awakened  in  the  spirit 
of  man  a  sense  of  his  infinite  worth  and  of  his  in- 
finite responsibility  to  God  (these  are  but  two  aspects 
of  the  same  truth)  can  civilization  make  sure  and 
uninterrupted  progress.  The  fuller  and  richer  de- 
velopment of  society  depends  on  the  development 
of  the  individual  Hfe. 

In  Japan,  Buddhism  adopted  the  ancestral  faith 

—  the  gods  of  Shinto  —  as  avatars  of  Buddha.  It 
split  up  into  a  multitude  of  sects,  many  of  which  seem 
to  have  been  nothing  more  than  forms  of  polytheistic 
animism  and  fetichism,  while  others  have  developed 
pantheistic  and  mystical  tendencies  such  as  we  find 
in  Buddhist  sects  in  other  countries.^  But  I  cannot 
find  any  sufficient  evidence  that  the  moral  code  of 
the  Samurai  owes  much  to  Buddhism  except  an 
accentuation  of  that  power  of  passive  self-control 
and  stoical  endurance  in  the  face  of  death  which 
was  indeed  required  by  the  supreme  virtue  of  loyalty 

—  a  virtue  that,  on  its  negative  side,  involves  a  dis- 
regard for  the  worth  of  the  individual  person.  For 
the  few  speculative  and  world-weary  spirits  there  was 
an  esoteric  mysticism,  for  the  many  a  crude  medley 


^  Compare  Griffis,  Religions  of  Japan,  and  A.  Lloyd,  Develop- 
ments of  Japanese  Buddhism,  in  Proceedings  of  Asiatic  Society  of 
Japan,  Vol.  XXII.,  Pt.  3.  I  regret  not  to  have  been  able  to  procure 
a  copy  of  B.  Nanjio's  Twelve  Japanese  Buddhist  Sects,  a  very 
important  work  on  the  subject. 


2o6      JESUS    CHRIST    AND    CIVILIZATION    OF   TO-DAY 

of  ancestral  and  spirit  worship,  magic,  and  divina- 
tion, with  morals  in  part  derived  from  Confucian- 
ism, and  in  part  developed  indigenously.  There 
have  occurred  in  the  history  of  Japanese  Buddhism 
reformatory  movements  of  a  lofty  character,  such  as 
Shinshu,  which  teaches  salvation  by  faith  in  Amida 
Buddha,  emphasizes  the  value  of  family  life,  denies 
any  especial  value  to  the  monastic  life,  allows  the 
eating  of  meat,  and  forbids  prayer  for  temporal  bless- 
ings ;  the  Zen,  or  meditative  sect,  which  lays  all  stress 
on  contemplation;  and  that  of  Nichiren  who 
preached  in  the  thirteenth  century,  with  i&ery  energy, 
an  eclecticism  which  claimed  to  unify  all  previous 
teachings  and  to  show  that  fervent  faith,  contem- 
plation, asceticism,  etc.,  are  all  imperfect  ways 
toward  the  Perfect  Enlightenment  in  which  is  seen 
the  identity  of  Buddha  with  all  living  beings.* 

It  is  evident  that  of  these  three  great  sects  only  the 
Zen  ^  is  akin  to  original  Hindu  Buddhism.  The 
Shinshu  is  far  removed  therefrom.  Enough  has  been 
said  to  illustrate  the  constant  and  great  transfor- 
mations that  Buddhism  has  undergone  in  the  Far 
East. 

It  is  quite  evident  that  in  Japan  Buddhism  has 
not  conquered  Shinto  and  that  it  did  not  create  the 

^  Mr.  Lloyd  thinks  that  the  Tathagata  of  Original  Enlighten- 
ment, i.e.  the  Perfect  Buddha,  is  identical  with  God  {op.  cit., 
p.  442).     If  so,  it  is  God  pantheistically  conceived. 

^  The  Soto  sub-sect  of  the  Zen  adds  scholarship  and  research  to 
contemplation. 


FOUNDERS   OF   RELIGIONS  207 

ethics  of  the  Samurai  class.  Here,  as  in  China,  it  bent 
to  fit  the  national  characteristics.  Interesting  though 
they  be,  Buddhist  reform  movements  in  Japan 
have  seemingly  been  influential  only  as  they  have 
moved  away  from  original  Buddhism.  The  Zen 
system,  with  its  auto-hypnotic  contemplation  of 
vacuity  until  the  mind  reaches  a  state  of  absolute 
self-annihilation  of  thought,  perception,  and  will,^ 
reminds  one  strongly  of  Hindu  quietism  and  mysti- 
cism. One  Japanese  writer  ^  attributes  great  social 
and  moral  influence  to  this  school,  but  probably 
greatly  exaggerates  on  this  point.  I  do  not  find  that 
any  other  native  or  foreign  writer  of  note  agrees  in 
attributing  such  a  profound  and  widespread  influence 
to  the  Zen  sect.  Its  doctrine  of  contemplative 
"abstraction,"  or  Dhyana,  is  certainly  not  provoca- 
tive of  a  positive  activity  in  the  moral  relations  of 
society. 

Recognizing  the  civilizing  influences  that  Buddh- 
ism has  exerted  in  the  development  of  the  Japanese, 
it  still  remains  an  open  question  how  far  the  original 
features  of  Buddhism  have  been  productive  of  a 
positive  and  progressive  moralization  of  social 
activities.  Japanese  authorities  are  not  themselves 
agreed  as  to  the  extent  and  depth  of  Buddhist  in- 
fluence.    One  foreign  writer^  indeed  asserts  that 

^  Okakura-Yoshisaburo,  The  Japanese  Spirit,  p.  74. 
2  Mr.  Okakura,  op.  cit. 

5  Professor  G.  W.  Knox,  Japanese  Life  in  Town  and  Country, 
p.  65. 


208      JESUS    CHRIST    AND    CIVILIZATION    OF   TO-DAY 

"in  all  the  sects  .  .  .  the  noble  eightfold  path  has 
been  largely  overgrown,  and  the  ethical  influence  is 
inconsiderable."  The  most  progressive  sect,  Shin- 
shu,  is  perhaps  farthest  removed  from  original 
Buddhism.  Indeed  it  is  strangely  like  a  diluted 
form  of  evangelical  protestantism. 

Popular  Buddhism  accommodates  itself  pretty 
completely  to  the  temper,  impulses,  and  customs  of 
the  people.  Philosophical  Buddhism  runs  into  a 
vague  subjective  ideahsm,  a  dreamy  pantheism  and 
acosmism.  The  world  and  the  self  fade  away  into 
the  Inane.  This  evanescence  may  bring  peace  of  a 
kind,  but  it  is  not  the  kind  of  peace  that  a  strong 
personality  in  touch  with  western  life  will  crave.^ 

So  far  as  modem  Buddhism  has  been  faithful  to 
its  original  principles,  then,  it  has  developed  a  mo- 
nasticism  for  the  world-weary,  a  passive  unhistorical 
and  impersonal  mysticism  for  the  contemplative 
spirits.  Nowhere  in  its  missionary  career  does  it 
appear  to  have  radically  changed  the  character  of 
a  people  or  to  have  seriously  modified  an  indigenous 
system  of  social  ethics.  It  has  contributed  but  little 
that  is  positive  and  creative  to  the  activities  of  cul- 
ture. It  is  true  we  find  a  Buddhist  art,  in  sculp- 
ture, architecture,  etc.,  everywhere.  But  these  are 
due  chiefly  to  the  natural  artistic  impulses  of  the 
various  peoples,  carried  forward  by  organized  Buddh- 
ism in  its  career  as  a  missionary  and  institutional 

*  On  the  whole  subject  of  Buddhism  and  Japanese  Life,  com- 
pare further  S.  L.  Gulick,  Evolution  of  the  Japanese. 


FOUNDERS   OF   RELIGIONS  2O9 

religion.  Buddhism  has  not  developed  experimen- 
tal science  nor  produced  a  great  social  movement 
anywhere.  Although  appealing  to  man,  irrespec- 
tive of  caste  or  training,  it  has  never  given  rise  to 
a  genuine  democracy.  In  truth  it  has  never  had  a 
vigorous  social  message.  By  its  very  nature  it  could 
not  be  a  militant  and  positive  force  in  social  morality. 
For,  notwithstanding  its  denial  of  the  reality  of  the 
individual.  Buddhism  is  one-sidedly  individuahstic. 
Its  aim  is  the  expansion  of  self-consciousness  to  the 
point  where  it  vanishes  in  the  Absolute.  But  its 
conception  of  self -consciousness  is  abstract.  The 
concrete  and  actual  personality  of  man  develops  in 
and  through  the  social  Hfe.  Personality,  in  the  west- 
em  and  Christian  sense,  grows  and  is  defined  through 
the  activities  of  social  Hfe  and  culture.  Individual 
Personality  and  Society  move  forward  together. 
This  thought  is  foreign  to  Buddhism.  Just  because 
it  is  a  religion  of  abstract  self-consciousness  Buddhism 
fails  to  supply  positive  principles  of  social  progress. 
Coming  down  from  the  heights  of  abstract  contem- 
plation, it  may  adopt  or  compromise  with  the  es- 
tablished morality  of  a  civilized  nation  such  as  China ; 
but  it  introduces  no  new  and  great  social  principle 
such  as  the  Christian  principle  of  service. 

The  Buddhist  doctrine  of  Karma  maintains  that 
the  fruits  or  effects  of  all  actions  are  rigidly  conserved 
in  the  ever  changing  process  of  existence.  The 
character  and  conditions  of  a  man^s  present  life 
depend  on  the  effects  of  past  actions;  not,  indeed, 


2IO      JESUS   CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION  OF   TO-DAY 

of  this  mart's  past  actions,  but  of  past  actions  that 
conjointly  cause  him  now  to  exist  as  this  particular 
being.  Karma  is  a  kind  of  conservation,  in  the  mass, 
of  countless  human  actions.  It  is  as  if  a  biologist 
were  to  assert  that  heredity  explained  everything  in 
human  Hfe.  In  truth,  while  this  doctrine  seems  to 
approach  modern  science  in  teaching  the  universality 
of  the  law  of  cause  and  effect,  it  saps  away  the  foun- 
dation of  moral  progress  and  paralyzes  the  individual 
will  by  teaching  the  ephemeral  character  of  the  pres- 
ent individual  and  his  weakness  in  the  face  of  the 
accumulated  fruits  of  Karma  now  assembled  in  his 
character,  and  against  which  he  can  do  little,  if  any- 
thing at  all.  This  doctrine  inspires  resignation,  not 
hope.  It  encourages  flight  from  the  world  and  its 
problems  and  renunciation  of  the  self  and  its  desires. 
It  weakens  personal  responsibility  and  leaves  no 
room  for  initiative.  If  the  individual  soul  be  but  a 
collocation  of  elements,  it  can  have  as  an  individual 
no  great  issues.  No  great  achievements  are  open  to 
it,  and  its  life  dwindles  in  importance  to  a  vanish- 
ing speck  on  the  surface  of  the  relentless  blind  on- 
going of  the  fated  elements  of  being.  Being,  ever 
impermanent,  shifts  its  arrangements  from  moment 
to  moment  and  individual  souls  arise  in  its  ocean 
and  fade  away.  To  them  comes  no  message,  ''My 
Father  worketh  hitherto  and  I  work."  There  is 
only  the  blind  ongoing  of  causes  and  effects.  The 
order  of  Karma  may  be  called  a  moral  order  by  con- 
trast with  the  notion  of  a  physical  order  indifferent 


FOUNDERS   OF   RELIGIONS  211 

to  morality;  but,  where  the  individual  soul  is  not 
itself  a  participant  in  cosmic  issues,  there  is  no  moral 
or  spiritual  life  in  the  Christian  sense. 

Now  that  East  and  West  are  met  together  and  the 
world  is  becoming  one,  it  will  have  to  choose  between 
the  fatalism  of  Karma  and  the  freedom  of  Christian 
personality,  i.e.  to  choose  between  Hindu  and  Buddh- 
istic pessimism  and  negation  of  progress  and  the 
Christian  principles  of  hope,  of  progress,  and  in- 
extinguishable spiritual  individuality. 

The  one  great  moral  contribution  of  Buddhism  to 
the  life  of  Asia  has  been  the  spread  of  the  spirit  of 
mercy  or  compassion.  It  has  softened  in  some  de- 
gree the  heart  of  Asia.  It  has  mollified  and  restrained 
the  cruelty  and  removed  to  some  extent  the  callous 
indifference  to  human  suffering  of  a  continent 
where  human  life  is  cheap  and  plentiful,  and  on  this 
score  Buddhism  should  be  accorded  its  full  meed 
of  praise.  But,  even  in  this  respect,  the  influence 
of  Buddha  is  far  behind  that  of  Jesus.^  Buddha's 
gospel  is  one  of  egoistic  self-redemption  by  reflection, 
Jesus'  gospel  one  of  redemption  through  vicarious 
suffering  and  social  service.  Institutions  and  ac- 
tivities for  the  relief  of  human  suffering  and  distress 
in  Buddhist  Asia  lag  far  behind  those  of  Christian 
peoples.  The  extreme  care  of  animals  bestowed 
in  Buddhist  countries  is  not  to  the  point,  since 
this  care  results  from  the  beHef  in  the  doctrine  of 
transmigration.     Mercy  in  Buddhism  has  a  colour- 

*  Compare  the  Chinese  indifference  to  suffering. 


212       JESUS   CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF  TO-DAY 

less  passive  quality.  In  St.  Paul,  as  in  his  Master 
and  the  genuine  disciple  everywhere,  it  is  a  positive 
passion.^  Christian  love  is  positive  and  creative 
because  it  is  founded  on  the  faith  in  the  value  of  the 
individual. 

In  short,  Buddhism  reaches  the  spiritual  by  nega- 
tion of  the  natural;  Jesus  and  his  followers  by  trans- 
formation of  the  natural. 

Redemption  in  Buddhism  means  in  its  j5nal  stage 
withdrawal  from  the  activities  of  social  and  cultural 
life ;  redemption  in  the  spirit  of  Jesus  involves  mak- 
ing these  activities  the  means  for  the  development 
of  a  spiritual  personality.  Buddhism  is  in  essence 
unhistorical,  unsocial;  the  teaching  of  Jesus  is  a 
positive  transforming  social  force  in  the  historical 
movement  of  humanity. 

It  is  one  thing  for  esoteric  students  with  a  specu- 
lative bent  to  find,  in  the  unhistorical  mysticism  of 
Buddhism,  a  satisfaction  of  their  own  contempla- 
tive and  quietistic  tendencies.  It  is  quite  another 
thing  to  find  a  positive  doctrine  which  impels  social 
progress  and  gives  an  ethical  impetus  and  basis  for 
the  activities  of  civilization  by  developing  at  once  a 
deeper  sense  of  the  worth  and  reality  of  the  individual 
life  and  of  the  moral  relationships  of  individuals 
toward  one  another.  These  two  aspects  of  culture 
must  grow  together.  Buddhism  ignores  the  former 
and  hence  can  do  but  little  for  the  latter.  Hence 
it  has  no  great  message  for  western  civilization, 
*  The  great  Christian  hymn  of  love  is  i  Cor.  13. 


FOUNDERS   OF   RELIGIONS  213 

present  and  to  come.  The  West  may  learn  from 
the  East  the  futility  of  a  mad  rush  to  get  or  to  do 
something  without  first  learning  to  possess  one's 
inward  self.  The  West  may  learn  from  the  East 
the  evils  of  a  one-sided  individualism  and  the  little- 
ness of  worldly  aims  which  do  not  satisfy  the  crav- 
ings of  the  spirit.  But  the  West  does  not  need  to 
go  to  the  East  for  the  foundation-principles  of 
spiritual  culture.  For  the  future  of  the  culture- 
life  of  humanity  does  not  lie  with  a  social  paternalism 
or  communism  in  which  the  personal  life  is  swamped, 
but  with  a  free  society  of  free  persons  springing  out 
of  a  faith  in  the  progressive  principle  of  personaHty 
as  grounded  in  the  nature  of  God. 

In  truth  the  power  of  adaptation  which  Buddh- 
ism has  shown  seems  to  be  due  to  its  socially 
negative  and  unhistorical  character;  whereas  the 
teachings  of  Jesus,  notwithstanding  the  grievous 
perversions  and  misunderstandings  from  which 
they  have  again  and  again  suffered,  constitute  a 
positive  and  impelling  force  in  the  work  of  civiliza- 
tion to-day. 

Indeed,  the  progressive  spiritual  forces  resident 
in  his  teaching  and  his  personaHty  must  be  those  of 
a  character  universal  in  its  ethical  and  spiritual 
quality  —  a  character  toward  which  human  per- 
sonaHty grows  as  in  the  process  of  civilization  it 
gains  fuller  scope  and  realization. 

Jesus  shows  the  way  to  a  positive  world-transcend- 
ing life  in  place  of  the  world-denying  flight  to  the 


214      JESUS  CHRIST  AND  CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

Inane  of  Buddhism.  He  teaches  men  to  attain  a 
spiritual  personality,  salvation,  and  communion 
with  the  Highest,  by  overcoming  the  world,  and 
through  active  cooperation  and  communion  with 
their  fellows. 


CHAPTER   X 

THE   FINAL   SIGNIFICANCE   OF  THE   PERSONALITY   OF 
JESUS    CHRIST 

The  gospel  of  Jesus  has  again  and  again  in  the 
creative  periods  of  Christian  history  proved  its  reno- 
vating power  and  displayed  the  inspiration  and  scope 
it  gives  to  the  personal  hfe  of  man.  Jesus'  signifi- 
cance for  the  soul  is  constantly  being  rediscovered  — 
by  the  mediaeval  mystics/  at  the  Reformation,  in  the 
nineteenth  century,  etc.,  etc.  In  his  vital  and  con- 
tinuing relation  to  the  historical  and  spiritual  de- 
velopment of  man  Jesus  displays  ever  anew  the  ab- 
solute and  permanent  religious  significance  of  his 
own  personality.  It  has  been  the  aim  of  this  sketch 
to  show  in  general  terms  that  his  principles  and 
personality  are  still  of  vital  and  supreme  import  to 
the  ethical  problems  of  civilization,  and  that  the  prin- 
ciples of  moral  renovation  and  progress  resident  in 
his  influence  are  pertinent  to  the  higher  personal  life 
to-day.  In  the  complete  relevancy  and  timeliness 
of  the  ethical  principles  of  Jesus  to  the  spiritual 
problems  of  the  individual  and  social  life  of  to-day 
as  of  all  times  we  have  an  empirical  test  of  the  worth 
of  his  teaching. 

And  the  perfect  harmony  of  his  ethical  and  spir- 

*  Meister,  Eckhart,  John  Tauler,  The  Theologia  Germanica,  etc. 
215 


2l6      JESUS   CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

itual  teaching  v/ith  his  personal  character  —  the 
absolute  incarnation  of  his  doctrine  in  his  life  and 
action  —  constitutes  the  eternal  meaning  of  his  his- 
torical appearance.  Jesus  the  Christ  is  for  us  the  ab- 
solute revelation  of  the  spiritual  meaning  of  human 
existence.  In  the  Hght  of  his  personality  and  deeds 
the  ethical  aspirations  and  spiritual  longings  of 
mankind  receive  an  ultimate  interpretation  and  are 
given  historic  and  actual  standing  ground  in  the  world 
of  our  historical  experience. 

Hence  Jesus  is  above  all  the  revealer,  the  living 
incarnation  of  supreme  spiritual  values.  For  his 
revelation  is  not  that  of  a  book,  not  that  of  a  cut  and 
dried  system,  not  that  of  an  earthly  organization. 
His  revelation  is  the  life  and  word  and  deed  of  an 
actual  historic  and-  yet  eternally  living  personality 
—  a  personahty  contemporaneous  with  every  age 
and  responsive  to  every  need  of  the  spirit  —  a  per- 
sonality eternal  in  meaning,  perennial  in  inspiration.^ 
Jesus  is  the  absolute  revealer  of  the  spiritual  destiny 
of  man.  For  he  reveals  by  embodying  the  secret 
heart  of  the  universal  Father  in  his  attitude  toward 
humanity. 

It  does  not  fall  within  the  plan  of  the  present  writ- 
ing to  discuss  the  theological  problems  involved  in 
the  statement  of  the  relationship  of  Jesus  Christ  to 
the  eternal  Father.  But  the  consideration  of  the 
powerful,  unique,  and  abiding  influence  which  the 

^  It  is  a  striking  fact  that  every  movement  of  religious  reform 
in  the  West  has  claimed  to  go  back  to  the  historical  Christ. 


PERSONALITY  OF   JESUS    CHRIST  21  7 

historic  personality  of  Jesus  has  exercised  on  the 
lives  of  men  and  on  their  ethical  conceptions  of  God, 
together  with  the  central  position  which  Jesus' 
own  person  has  ever  occupied  in  the  ethical  and 
religious  life  connected  with  his  historic  appearance 
and  teaching,  involve  some  inference  as  to  his  ul- 
timate relation  to  God. 

If  this  historic  personality  so  powerfully  and 
imiquely  influences  men's  ideas  about  God  and  so 
vitalizes  their  feelings  of  relationship  to  the  Divine, 
then  Jesus  must  stand  in  a  unique  relation  to  God. 
Confining  ourselves  to  the  standpoint  of  ethical  expe- 
rience and  looking  at  the  character  and  deeds  of  Jesus 
in  the  light  of  his  teaching  and  of  his  social  relation- 
ships, we  must  recognize  that  he  was  absolutely  good. 
So  far  as  human  spiritual  vision  can  penetrate  Jesus 
was  without  spot  or  blemish  —  an  utterly  har- 
monious ethical  personality.  In  him  we  find  the 
absolute  interpenetration  of  ideal  and  deed,  of  as- 
piration and  resolve,  and  the  final  consequence  or 
complete  expression  of  this  perfect  integrity  or  har- 
mony of  character  or  life  is  his  absolute  ethical  oneness 
with  God.  His  will,  his  thought,  the  whole  set  and 
tendency  of  his  personaHty,  are  in  complete  unison 
with  the  will  of  the  Heavenly  Father  whose  messen- 
ger he  is. 

As  a  matter  of  experience  or  personal  insight,  then, 
we  must  recognize  that  the  ethical  principles  and  the 
absolutely  holy  Hfe  of  Jesus  reach  their  culminating 
interpretation  in  his  absolute  ethical  or  spiritual  one- 


2l8      JESUS   CHRIST    AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

ness  of  character  with  God.  The  will  of  Jesus  is  in 
complete  harmony  with  the  Father's  will.  The  per- 
sonaHty  of  Jesus  is  in  its  central  ethical  or  spiritual 
attributes  one,  with  God.  In  this  sense  the  ethics 
of  Jesus  involves  the  recognition  that  he  is  the  Son 
of  God  —  the  perfect  realization  of  that  Divine  Son- 
ship  which  other  men  possess  in  promise  and  potency. 
All  are  sons  of  God  and  heirs  of  eternal  life.  But 
Jesus  Christ,  the  perfect  son,  remains  uniquely  one 
with  God. 

In  the  first  place  Jesus  possessed  and  gave  utter- 
ance to  an  absolutely  unique  God-consciousness, 
He  stood  in  a  unique  relation  to  the  Heavenly 
Father  by  virtue  of  the  absolute  originality  and  cer- 
tainty of  his  knowledge  of  the  Father's  character. 
Religious  teachers  before  him  had  indeed  spoken  of 
God  as  the  Father  of  men  and  even  of  love  as  a 
Divine  attribute ;  but  with  Jesus  this  Fatherhood  of 
God  has  a  new  and  vivid  meaning,  and  Love,  as  the 
Supreme  attribute  of  the  Father,  gets  an  entirely 
new  sweep  and  depth  of  application.  Jesus  could 
not  have  taught  this  new  doctrine  of  the  Father 
with  such  power  and  authority  if  it  had  not  been 
part  and  parcel  of  his  own  consciousness.  One 
who  dimly  conceived  in  speculation  or  dream  such 
a  revolutionary  doctrine  would  not  have  enunciated 
it  with  such  convincing  power.  The  mind  of  Jesus 
as  presented  to  us  in  the  gospels  is,  to  say  the  least, 
one  of  extraordinary  sanity,  power,  and  balance; 
and  this  mind  is  pervaded  through  and  through  with 


PERSONALITY   OF   JESUS   CHRIST  219 

its  new  knowledge  of  God.  To  have  made  this 
knowledge  the  pivotal  point  in  his  whole  life  and 
teaching,  a  mind  so  clear  and  strong  as  Jesus'  must 
indeed  have  been  fully  conscious  of  the  verity  of  that 
intuition  of  God.  It  is  entirely  consonant  with  the 
whole  character  of  his  thought  and  activity  that 
Jesus  was  fully  aware  of  his  possession  of  this  unique 
God-consciousness,  a  knowledge  which  he  could 
indeed  impart  to  others  but  which  in  its  pristine  pur- 
ity and  power  first  belonged  to  him  alone.  When 
we  take  into  account  his  entire  career  of  teaching 
and  work,  nothing  in  the  gospels  rings  truer  than  these 
words,  "No  man  knoweth  the  Son  but  the  Father: 
neither  knoweth  any  man  the  Father  save  the  Son, 
and  he  to  whomsoever  the  Son  will  reveal  him" 
(Matt.  11:27).  And  the  beautiful  invitation  and 
promise  which  follows,  "Come  unto  me  all  ye  that 
labour,  and  are  heavy  laden,  and  I  will  give  you 
rest"  (Matt,  ii  :28),  would  be  entirely  out  of  place 
without  this  clear  and  certain  fihal  consciousness. 
That  he  should  extend  such  an  invitation  and  make 
such  a  promise  in  view  of  the  worldly  hazards  and 
difficulties  of  discipleship  implies,  in  a  character  so 
sane  and  integral  as  that  of  Jesus,  a  knowledge  of 
God  so  clear  and  certain  that  it  passes  the  limits  of 
ordinary  humanity. 

I  have  already  said  that  so  far  as  human  eye  can 
see,  Jesus  was  morally  perfect,  an  utterly  harmonious 
ethical  personality.  His  will  was  at  all  times  com- 
pletely one  with  the  Perfect  Will  of  the  Father.   This, 


220      JESUS   CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

too,  separates  him  from  ordinary  humanity.  It  is 
true,  of  course,  that  he  himself  does  not  separate  his 
own  moral  will,  as  different  in  kind,  from  that  which 
other  men,  as  sons  of  God,  may  attain  unto.  To  his 
disciples  is  given  the  command  "to  be  perfect  as 
your  Father  in  Heaven  is  perfect"  (Matt.  5:48). 
It  is  "my  Father"  (Matt.  26:  39,  Luke  22  129,  etc.) 
and  "your  Father"  (John  20:17).  Purity  and 
goodness  are  purity  and  goodness  wherever  found. 
St.  Augustine's  characterization  of  the  virtues  of  the 
heathen  as  splendid  vices  is  utterly  opposed  to 
the  spirit  of  the  Master  who  says,  "Inasmuch  as 
ye  have  done  it  unto  one  of  the  least  of  these  my 
brethren,  ye  have  done  it  unto  me"  (Matt.  25:40). 
"Many  shall  come  from  the  East  and  West,  and  shall 
sit  down  with  Abraham,  and  Isaac,  and  Jacob,  in 
the  kingdom  of  heaven"  (Matt.  8:11,  Luke  13 :  29). 
The  difiference  in  moral  quahty  of  will  between 
Jesus  and  other  good  men,  then,  seems  indeed  a 
diflference  in  degree,  not  in  kind.  But,  if  from  candid 
study  of  that  Life  and  Character  we  must  say  rever- 
ently and  humbly  —  here  alone  do  we  find  absolute 
harmony  of  a  Human  Will  with  the  Will  of  God; 
here  alone  do  we  find  Divine  Perfection  in  a  human 
life;  in  view  of  the  spiritual  sohtariness  and  perfec- 
tion of  that  character  does  not  the  difference  in  de- 
gree become  a  difference  in  kind  ?  If  one  finds  only 
one  case  in  history  and  experience  of  absolute  ethical 
perfection,  does  not  that  constitute  an  isolated  in- 
stance, a  wholly  unique  pcrsonahty?    Is  not,  then, 


PERSONALITY   OF   JESUS   CHRIST  221 

Jesus  alone  among  the  sons  of  men  in  this  respect  ? 
Against  this  interpretation  there  is  quoted  the  saying 
"Why  callest  thou  me  good?  None  is  good,  save 
one  (that  is)  God  "  (Luke  i8 :  19,  Mark  10 : 7).  But 
this  was  said  to  one  not  an  intimate  disciple,  one  who 
did  not  really  know  and  sympathize  with  Jesus, 
probably  one  who  came  half  in  earnest,  half  in  curi- 
osity, with  flattery  on  his  lips,  "Good  master." 
Over  against  this  case  may  be  set  the  sayings,  "  One 
is  your  Master,  even  Christ*'  (Matt.  23:8,  10). 
"Which  of  you  convinceth  me  of  sin"  (John  8:46), 
the  passage  referring  to  sin  against  the  Son  of  Man 
(Matt.  12  :  31,  32,  etc.). 

Moreover,  it  is  a  fallacy  arising  from  the  divided 
and  imperfectly  organized  character  of  our  lives  that 
in  matters  that  concern  conduct,  spirit,  personality, 
we  set  knowledge  over  against  will.  We  speak  of 
knowing  the  good  and  doing  the  evil  because  our 
knowledge  of  good  is  not  a  vital,  personal  possession. 
The  knowledge  that  Mars  is  inhabited  or  that  the 
square  root  of  two  is  an  irrational  number  is  at  pres- 
ent of  no  practical  moment  to  me.  In  these  modem 
days  of  the  rapid  accumulation  and  easy  diffusion 
of  purely  theoretical  knowledge  we  are  prone  to 
assume  that  knowledge  is  and  may  remain  entirely 
separate  from  will ;  but,  in  truth,  whatever  knowledge 
be  vitally  assimilated  must  affect  and  find  expres- 
sion in  character.  Vital  knowledge,  knowledge  that 
is  actually  part  and  parcel  of  my  being,  must  some- 
how get  expression  in  will  either  by  way  of  deed  or 


222       JESUS   CHRIST    AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

restraint  from  deed.  Personal  and  vital  thinking 
is  acting.' 

In  short,  in  the  realm  of  inner  realities,  of  the  growth 
and  activity  of  personal  spirits,  insight  and  action, 
knowledge  and  will,  are  two  sides  of  the  same  process. 
Jesus'  words,  "  Blessed  are  the  pure  in  heart  (i.e.  in 
will  and  feeling)  for  they  shall  see  (i.e.  know)  God," 
are  in  harmony  with  a  sound  psychology.  There- 
fore, applying  his  words  to  his  own  case,  and,  in 
the  light  of  a  sound  psychology  of  personality  which 
can  recognize  no  ultimate  divorce  between  knowledge 
and  action,  the  moral  perjection  oj  Jesus  and  his 
unique  God-consciousness  are  hut  two  aspects  oj  the 
same  spiritual  process  or  reality.  For  the  very 
unique  insight  or  knowledge  which  he  possessed  was 
of  a  personal  and  ethical  character,  viz.  knowledge  of 
a  Supreme  Righteous  and  Loving  Father;  and  to 
have  possessed  and  imparted  this  knowledge,  the 
Master  must  himself  have  been  ethically  perfect. 

The  entire  teaching  and  work  of  Jesus  Christ  rests 
on  the  same  presupposition  which  has  imderlain 
the  movement  of  European  civilization  toward 
religious,  industrial,  intellectual,  and  social  freedom, 
toward  justice  for  all  men,  toward  equality  of 
opportunity  and  social  democracy,  toward,  in 
short,  freedom  and  scope  for  every  individual,  viz. 
that  the  lives  of  persons,  realized  in  fellowship  one 
with  another,  are  the  highest  and  worthiest  realities 

*  On  the  motor  aspect  of  ideas,  see  J.  Royce,  OtUUnes  of 
Psychology,  passim. 


PERSONALITY   OF   JESUS   CHRIST  223 

in  the  cosmos  and  that  the  principle  of  personality 
is  the  supreme  and  governing  principle  of   things. 

The  ethics  of  Jesus,  the  ethics  of  spiritual  democ- 
racy, the  ethics  of  personality  —  these  are  convertible 
terms.  If  the  faith  in  the  ultimate  reality  of  persons 
virhich  is  the  ethical  basis  of  our  civilization  be  justi- 
fied, then  it  is  of  the  utmost  moment  to  all  our  cultural 
and  social  activities  that  Jesus,  who  first  clearly 
enunciated  this  faith  and  who  is  hence  the  moral 
leader  of  the  vanguard  of  humanity,  be  —  in  the  per- 
fection of  knowledge  of  the  Father  and  in  the  har- 
mony of  his  will  with  the  supreme  principle  of  things 
—  indeed  one  with  the  Father.  A  God  and  Father 
of  Persons  revealed  perfectly  as  to  his  spiritual 
nature  and  his  purpose  toward  the  race  through 
a  perfect  man  —  faith  in  such  is  surely  of  the  great- 
est moment  to  our  civilization  and  its  future. 

Whatever  formula  we  may  adopt  to  express  or 
describe  it,  faith  in  the  unique  oneness  of  the  Man, 
Jesus  Christ,  with  God — the  moral  Ruler  of  the 
Cosmos — is  so  far  from  being  an  antiquated  theo- 
logical abstraction  or  a  coldly  theoretical  proposition 
that  it  has  the  most  vital  practical  implications  for 
society  and  civilization  as  well  as  for  the  individual 
soul. 

If  objection  be  raised  that  ethical  or  spiritual  one- 
ness with  God,  however  unique,  is  not  substantial 
or  metaphysical  identity  with  God,  I  should  reply 
that,  if  one  mean  by  metaphysical  that  which  is 
ultimately  real  in  the  relations  of  persons,  the  perfect 


224      JESUS    CHRIST    AND    CIVILIZATION    OF   TO-DAY 

ethical  unity  is  the  truly  metaphysical.  A  substan- 
tial or  metaphysical  oneness  which  is  not  grounded 
on  the  ethical  harmony  of  personal  will  with  personal 
will  must  be  material  or  quasi-material.  The  no- 
tion of  a  personal  unity,  if  made  dependent  on 
the  conception  of  some  immovable  eternal  substance, 
is  reduced  to  mechanical  or  materialistic  terms. 
If  Christ's  unity  with  the  Father  were  of  this  descrip- 
tion, his  personality  must  be  absorbed  or  lost  in  that 
of  the  creative  God.  The  highest  and  ultimate  or 
most  real  type  of  unity  is  that  of  personal  spirits — 
oneness  of  will,  of  heart,  of  character,  and  affection. 
It  is  in  this  sense,  as  the  perfect  embodiment  or  ex- 
pression of  God's  character,  as  the  absolute  harmony 
of  a  human  will  with  the  will  of  the  Heavenly  Father, 
that  we  may  say  on  grounds  of  ethical  and  spiritual 
experience  and  by  way  of  necessary  inference  from 
our  own  communion  with  him  that  Jesus  is  the  Son 
of  God.  In  this  sense  we  may  well  say  that  the  ethics 
of  Jesus  Christ  culminates  in  his  Divine  Human 
Personality,  and  that  he  is  the  absolute  norm  or 
standard  of  the  Spiritual  Life,  and  the  Perfect 
Revelation  of  God's  character. 


Appendix.    Ethics  and  Eschatology 

The  synoptic  gospels  contain  a  large  number 
of  sayings  in  which  Jesus  proclaims  the  imminence 
of  a  crisis.  The  Kingdom  of  God  shall  come  with 
power.  The  son  of  man  shall  appear  in  the  clouds  of 
heaven  attended  with  legions  of  angels,  etc.  (See 
Matt.  16:27-28,  24:27-44,  26:64;  Mark  13: 
8,  24-27,  14:62;  Luke  12:40,  17:24-30,  21:27, 
21:36,  22:16-18,  etc.)  Now,  on  their  face,  these 
utterances  seem  to  announce  the  approaching  end  of 
the  present  world.  Mundane  human  society  and  its 
affairs  are  to  be  wound  up  by  the  act  of  God  who  will 
so  inaugurate  his  own  perfect  reign,  vindicate  the 
claims  of  the  Son  of  Man,  and  estabhsh  him  with 
supernatural  power  as  judge  of  the  world  and  ruler 
of  the  new  order.  These  sayings  are  too  prominent 
in  the  gospels  to  be  easily  disposed  of  either  as 
legendary  or  figurative. 

Now,  it  may  be  said  that  the  ethics  of  our  Lord  do 
not  apply,  and  are  indeed  irrelevant,  to  the  affairs  of 
life  in  a  world  in  which  no  sudden  cataclysm  of  this 
nature  has  literally  taken  place,  in  a  world  in  which 
the  ordinary  concerns  of  life  and  industrial,  artistic, 
scientific,  and  political  activities  have  gone  forward 
steadily  since  the  days  of  their  utterance.  It  may  be 
claimed  that  Jesus  Christ  in  his  teaching  takes  no 
Q  225 


226      JESUS   CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

account  of  family  life,  no  account  of  art  or  industry  or 
state,  because  he  expected  all  these  things  to  cease 
very  soon.  It  is  urged  that  the  hard  sayings —  *'  Sell 
all  that  thou  hast"  (Luke  i8 :  22,  Matt.  19 :  21,  etc.), 
"  Let  the  dead  bury  their  dead  "  (Matt.  8:22),  "  If  any 
man  come  to  me,  and  hate  not  his  father,  and  mother, 
and  wife  and  children,  yea  and  his  own  life  also,  he 
cannot  be  my  disciple"  (Luke  14:  26),  etc. — clearly 
are  spoken  in  the  expectation  of  the  immediate  or 
speedy  ending  of  the  present  earthly  order  and  of  the 
miraculous  estabhshment  of  the  Kingdom  of  God  or 
perfect  reign  of  righteousness.  This  Kingdom, 
it  may  be  urged,  has  nothing  in  common  with  the 
earthly  lot  of  men  as  we  live  and  know  it.  "They 
neither  marry  nor  are  given  in  marriage  "  (Matt. 
22 :  30,  etc.).  Hence,  it  is  said,  to  talk  about  the 
application  of  the  ethics  of  Christ  to  the  activities  of 
human  civilization  and  the  affairs  of  actual  human 
society  is  to  miss  the  entire  issue  of  his  teaching. 
Since  this  Kingdom  has  not  come,  we  not  only  do  not, 
but  we  cannot,  live  by  his  ethical  principles.  This 
is  a  serious  charge.  If  it  be  sustained,  the  church 
and  historical  Christianity  have  been  largely  mis- 
taken, the  teachings  of  the  Master  have  no  bearing 
on  the  life  of  humane  culture,  and  either  we  must 
leave  the  world  or  live  in  it  in  opposition  to  his  spirit. 
A  way  out  of  the  difficulty  may  be  sought  by 
denying  entirely  the  authenticity  of  these  apocalyptic 
and  eschatological  sayings.  A  support  to  this  way 
is  supplied  by  the  contention  that  Jesus  Christ  did  not 


APPENDIX  227 

call  himself  the  Son  of  Man  or  claim  to  be  the  Mes- 
siah. I  have  already  dealt  briefly  with  these  two 
points,  but  a  few  words  may  be  added  here. 

The  obvious  and  only  satisfactory  explanation  of 
his  trial  and  condemnation  is  that  Jesus  claimed  to  be 
the  true  Messiah ;  that  he  made  his  entry  into  Jerusa- 
lem and  drove  out  the  money-changers  and  preached 
in  the  temple  under  that  claim.  He  was  condemned 
and  crucified  at  the  instance  of  Jewish  ecclesiastics 
as  a  false  Messiah.  He  had  run  counter  to  their 
preconceived  picture  and  hope  of  the  Messiah  and  it 
was  easy  to  give  colour  to  the  only  charge  that 
would  strongly  appeal  to  a  Roman  governor,  viz. 
that  Jesus  was  a  stirrer-up  of  sedition. 

Without  the  presupposition  of  a  Messianic  con- 
sciousness on  Jesus'  part  it  is  impossible  to  account 
for  the  question  at  Cassarea  Phillipi  with  Peter's 
answer,  "Thou  art  the  Christ."  And  this  narrative 
bears  upon  it  the  stamp  of  genuineness.  Taken  in  its 
setting  in  the  development  of  the  Master's  mission, 
this  story  has  a  uniqueness  and  verisimilitude  that 
make  it  well-nigh  inconceivable  that  it  should  have 
arisen  without  foundation  in  fact.  Moreover,  the 
narrative  of  the  temptation,  in  Matt.  4 :  i-io  and 
Luke  4  :  1-13,  is  wholly  inexplicable  without 
Jesus'  belief  in  his  own  Messiahship.  Such  a  story 
could  not  have  originated  in  the  circle  of  disciples 
after  his  death.  The  growing  faith  of  the  primitive 
church  in  his  supremacy  over  the  world  and  in  the 


228      JESUS    CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

Divine  character  of  his  Mission  do  not  account  for  its 
presence  in  the  gospels.  This  faith  would  rather 
have  tended  to  eliminate  or  slur  over  the  idea  of 
temptation  just  as  it  would  tend  to  eliminate  such 
utterances  as  "None  is  good,  save  One,  that  is  God, " 
"My  God,  my  God,  why  hast  thou  forsaken  me?" 
etc. 

The  story  of  the  temptation  is  the  record,  in  imag- 
inative and  pictorial  setting,  of  three  stages  or  phases 
of  the  inner  conflict  in  the  Master's  spirit  with  the 
popular  Messianic  ideal  of  his  own  time  and  people. 
Admit  his  Messianic  consciousness  as  becoming 
clear  and  dominating  his  spirit  from  the  baptism  by 
John  and  the  meaning  of  the  story  of  the  temptation 
is  clear.  Full  of  the  consciousness  of  his  tran- 
scendent mission  and  of  his  correspondingly  great 
powers,  the  first  temptation,  following  the  order  in 
Luke,  viz.  wilderness,  mountain,  city,  is  that  he  shall 
claim  exemption  from  the  physical  weakness  and 
disabilities  of  ordinary  humanity;  the  second,  that, 
for  the  sake  of  a  more  rapid  and  easy  acquisition  of 
adherents,  of  a  general  acceptance  of  his  message  and 
allegiance  to  his  person,  he  shall  compromise  with  the 
powers  that  be,  —  with  those  forces  in  the  nation 
which  he  regards  as  Satanic  —  the  hypocritical 
legaHsts,  Scribes  and  Pharisees,  perhaps  also  with 
the  Pagan  forces  of  Rome;  the  third,  that  he  shall 
demand  from  God  a  signal  proof  of  his  authority 
as  messenger  from  on  high  by  way  of  a  miraculous 
demonstration  of  care  for  the  person  of  the  Messiah. 


APPENDIX 


229 


If  Jesus,  from  the  outset  of  his  public  career,  be- 
lieved himself  to  be  the  Messiah  and  yet  could  not  at 
once  reveal  his  claim,  by  reason  of  the  inflammable 
state  of  popular  feeling  and  expectation  on  this  sub- 
ject, since  to  evoke  a  premature  popular  movement 
would  be  to  invite  armed  rebeUion  against  Rome  and 
to  destroy  utterly  the  spiritual  and  lasting  character 
of  his  mission,  it  is  quite  obvious  why  he  should 
employ  a  self-designation  whose  prophetic  associa- 
tions and  spiritual  meaning  in  Daniel  7 :  13  and  in 
certain  Psalms,  notably  Ps.  2  and  8,  were  at  once 
sufliciently  exalted  and  sufficiently  vague  to  make  it 
a  fit  vehicle  of  expression  for  the  spiritual  character 
and  lofty  nature  of  his  mission  without  revealing  gen- 
erally and  immediately  his  Messianic  claims.  Such 
a  term  was  the  "Son  of  Man."  Its  meaning  was 
sufficiently  vague  and  its  associations  lofty  enough 
to  enable  Jesus,  by  use  of  it  and  by  the  illu- 
minating context  of  his  own  teachings  and  deeds, 
to  pour  into  the  phrase  a  new,  rich,  and  unique 
content.^ 

^  The  term  "  son  of  man  "  or  "  the  man  "  in  Daniel  7:13  does 
not  seem  to  mean  a  definite  individual  but  to  stand  for  Israel; 
whereas  in  later  Jewish  apocalyptics  it  means  a  heavenly,  pre- 
existent  being.  In  the  Book  of  Enoch  (Chaps.  37-70)  he  is  a 
preexistent  being  who  comes  with  power  and  as  judge  to  estab- 
lish the  new  era.  If  the  Book  of  Enoch  be  of  pre-Christian  date 
it  is  quite  possible  that  the  picture  of  the  Son  of  Man  therein  pre- 
sented was  familiar  to  our  Lord  and  to  a  small  circle  for  which  it 
would  have  a  Messianic  connotation.  This  is  a  suggestion  of 
Sanday's  in  his  Outlines  of  the  Life  of  Christ.  See  Charles' 
translation  of  the  Book  of  Enoch,  especially  Chaps.  46  and  48. 


230      JESUS   CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

Sometimes  when  he  uses  it,  this  phrase  expresses 
his  utter  humanity,  his  solidarity  with  the  race. 
Sometimes  again  it  emphasizes  the  unique  mean- 
ing of  his  mission  as  founder  of  a  new  order. 
And,  again,  in  the  latter  and  bitter  days  it  bears  the 
weight  of  his  confident  faith  that  the  Heavenly  Father 
will  in  the  time  to  come  vindicate  and  seal  with  in- 
disputable authority  and  power  the  mission  of  the 
Son.  This  is  the  meaning  of  such  sayings  as  "I 
will  not  drink  from  henceforth  of  the  fruit  of  the  vine, 
until  the  Kingdom  of  God  shall  come"  (Luke 
22:18).    Compare  Mark  14:25. 

If  Jesus  held  himself  to  be  the  present  founder 
of  the  Kingdom  and  the  future  Messiah,  and  be- 
lieved that  God  would  take  care  of  that  Kingdom 
by  signal  and  direct  exercise  of  power,  then  there 
is  no  passage  in  the  synoptics  which  offers  any  seri- 
ous difficulty  in  the  way  of  the  assumption  that 
"the  Son  of  Man"  is  a  self-designation  of  our  Lord, 
which  points  toward  his  future  triumph.  Only  thus 
do  such  expressions  as  "No  man  knoweth  the  Son 
but  the  Father ;  neither  knoweth  any  man  the  Father, 
save  the  Son"  (Matt.  11:27)  become  intelligible. 
See  also  Matt.  17:5,  21:37  f.;  Mark  9:7;  Luke 
12:  8-10,17:30,  18:8;  John  6:62,  13:31,  etc. 
There  is  no  good  evidence  that  the  title  "Son  of 
Man"  was  a  Messianic  designation  widely  current  in 
our  Lord's  day.^    He  probably  took  the  notion  from 

^  On  this  point  see  Dalman,  The  Words  of  JesuSy  pp.  234  fif.,  and 
Driver's  article  "  Son  of  Man  "  in  Hastings'  Dictionary  of  the  Bible. 


APPENDIX  231 

Daniel  ^  and  the  psalms.  But  whatever  his  literary 
source,  his  supreme  greatness  in  other  respects 
warrants  the  assumption  that,  in  his  usage  of  this 
title  to  designate  himself,  he  was  bound  by  no  tradi- 
tion. He  filled  the  title  ''  Son  of  Man"  with  the  con- 
tent of  the  Isaianic  "suffering  servant  of  Jahweh" 
and,  through  his  teaching  and  deeds,  fused  into  an 
incomparable  synthesis  the  notions  of  a  Heaven-sent 
Messiah,  of  a  Son  of  Man  human  in  all  respects, 
and  of  the  "suffering  servant"  who  by  his  lowHness, 
meekness,  and  suft'ering  serves  God  and  serves  man.' 
If,  then,  the  term  "  Son  of  Man  "  were  not  a  popular 
Messianic  title  in  the  days  of  Christ,  and  if  almost 
until  the  end  of  his  life  he  must  carry  alone  in  his 
bosom  the  tremendous  burden  of  a  Messiahship 
almost  at  all  points  antithetical  to  that  current  in  his 
day  as  a  secret  only  to  be  revealed  when  he  chose  to 
face  the  last  inevitable  crisis,  it  is  surely  reasonable 

^  It  is  quite  possible  that  Jesus  was  familiar  with  the  concep- 
tion of  the  heavenly,  preexistent  "  Son  of  Man"  of  the  similitudes 
of  the  Book  of  Enoch  and  that  this  character  influenced  his  choice  of 
the  term,  although  this  assumption  is  hardly  necessary  to  account 
for  his  use  of  the  term.  Bousset  points  out  that  this  latter  con- 
ception of  the  Messias  was  entirely  foreign  to  the  older  prophetic 
and  more  characteristically  Jewish  ideas  in  which  Messiah  was  an 
earthly  king  of  Davidic  lineage,  not  a  heavenly  and  preexistent 
visitant.  As  to  the  precise  source  of  the  latter  notion  we  are  in 
the  dark.  It  appears  full-fledged  in  the  Book  of  Enoch.  See 
Bousset,  Religion  des  Judenthums  im  neutestamentlichen  Zeitalter, 
pp.  304  ff.;  article  "Development  of  Doctrine  in  the  Apocrypha" 
in  Hastings'  Dictionary  of  the  Bible,  Vol.  V.  Further  references 
will  be  found  in  the  latter  work. 

2  Isaiah  53,  etc. 


232       JESUS   CHRIST    AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

to  maintain  that,  believing  as  he  did  that  God  would 
vindicate  him  as  Messiah  and  conscious  from  his 
baptism  of  his  unique  mission  and  position,  Jesus 
would  and  could  use,  in  the  unique  sense  it  must  have 
had  for  his  own  consciousness,  this  plastic  term  "the 
Son  of  Man.' '  ^  For  this  term  both  concealed  and  re- 
vealed his  inner  consciousness  of  his  mission  and  posi- 
tion in  relation  to  his  Heavenly  Father  and  his  people. 
He  used  it  in  the  third  person  because  it  was  typical 
and  anticipatory  of  the  full  declaration  of  his  Messiah- 
ship  and  of  God's  future  vindication  of  his  work. 
It  comprehended  both  the  inner  secret  of  his  unique- 
ness, the  greatness  of  his  claims  as  Saviour  and 
Judge  and  his  full  fellowship  with  man. 

So  understood  the  Son  of  Man  is  the  future  Mes- 
siah, the  inaugurator  of  the  long-expected  Kingdom 
of  God.  What  then  is  to  be  said  in  regard  to  the 
imagery  in  which  the  coming  of  this  Kingdom  is 
depicted?  That  this  imagery  was  derived  from 
current  Jewish  apocalyptic  sources  is,  of  course, 
very  obvious.  That  Jesus  himself  made  use  to 
some  extent  of  these  images  is  a  reasonable  assump- 
tion; that  his  words  thereon,  in  transmission  and 
writing-down,  were  further  coloured  by  the  presence 
of  this  apocalyptic  element  in  the  minds  of  his 
disciples  is  an  equally  fair  assumption.  To  ap- 
preciate the  apocalyptic  element  in  the  gospels  one 

^  The  strongest  argument  against  this  view  of  the  term  "  Son 
of  Man"  is  that  of  Schmidt,  The  Prophet  of  Nazareth,  Chap.  V. 


APPENDIX  233 

must  consider  carefully  the  ideas  and  beliefs  of  cur- 
rent Judaism.  We  must  remember  that  the  current 
Jewish  conception  of  the  expected  Kingdom  was 
not  absolutely  fixed  and  definite.  It  was  plastic  and 
indefinite.^  It  contained  many  elements,  spiritual 
and  poHtical,  religious  and  worldly,  etc.  Its  apoca- 
lyptic framework  was  not  stereotyped.  It  prob- 
ably contained  elements  derived  from  Daniel  and 
Ezekiel,  later  apocalyptic  features  like  those  of 
the  Book  of  Enoch,  the  Psalter  of  Solomon,  the 
Testament  of  the  Patriarchs,  etc.  The  older 
prophetic  notion  of  the  Kingdom  was  that  of  a 
political  state  with  its  capital  at  Jerusalem  and  the 
Messiah  or  anointed  one  of  Davidic  lineage  as  its 
first  king. 

Alongside  of  this  notion  there  grew  into  promi- 
nence, perhaps  shortly  before  the  time  of  Christ,  the 
notion  of  an  entirely  transcendent  and  other-worldly 
Kingdom  or  rule  of  God.  This  latter  Kingdom 
was  to  be  ushered  in  with  great  signs  and  wonders, 
in  short  with  apocalyptic  displays  of  Divine  Power. 
Its  coming  was  the  close  of  one  age,  or  aeon,  and  the 
beginning  of  another — the  age  or,  sometimes,  the 
timeless  aeon  of  Divine  Righteousness  and  Peace. 
This  latter  conception  of  the  Kingdom,  with  its 
metaphysical  and  transcendent  elements,  was  less 
political  and  more  individualistic  and  spiritual  than 
the  older  one;  less  social,  but  more  directly  ethical 

1  The  study  of  the  prophets  and  the  post-exilic  and  apocryphal 
writings  displays  fully  the  plastic  character  of  this  conception. 


234      JESUS   CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION  OF   TO-DAY 

and  religious  in  colouring  * ;  less  Jewish  and  more  uni- 
versal. The  form  given  to  it  was,  presumably,  in- 
fluenced by  Persian  ideas.  (The  Persian  faith, 
Mazdaism,  too,  looked  for  a  Messiah,  Saoshyant, 
who  should  inaugurate  the  absolute  reign  of  Ahura- 
Mazda.)  The  affinity  of  Jesus'  conception  of  the 
Kingdom  was  with  the  transcendent  and  ethical 
elements  just  mentioned.  He  stood  always  in  sharp 
opposition  to  political,  narrowly  Jewish,  and  this- 
worldly  ideas  of  the  reign  of  Divine  righteousness. 
We  may  suppose  that  Jesus  took  up  and  filled 
with  new  ethical  and  religious  content  some  of  the 
current  conceptions  of  an  anticipated  cBon  or  time  to 
come,  in  which  God  would  judge  and  save  the  world 
through  Messiah ;  separating  the  evil  from  the  good, 
filling  the  latter  with  knowledge  of  Himself  and  of  his 
peace  and  righteousness.  But  it  is  always  to  be 
borne  in  mind  that,  whatever  notions  the  Master 
took  up,  and  from  whatever  source,  these  were 
transformed  and  filled  with  a  new  ethical  and 
spiritual  dynamic  and  meaning  by  the  vitalizing 
touch  of  his  spirit.  What  separates  Jesus'  references 
to  the  full  coming  of  the  new  Kingdom  or  aeon  from 
all  contemporary  notions  —  Jewish,  Persian,  or  other- 
wise— is  the  unique  content  of  faith  and  insight  which 
breathes  in  his  utterances  and  the  dynamic  spiritual 
energy  which  makes  these  utterances  the  determining 

*  See  Bousset,  op.  cit.,  Kap.  XII.,  esp.  pp.  255-266  and  Kap. 
XIII.,  esp.  pp.  297-308  and  articles"  Eschatology"  in  Cheyne's 
Encyclopedia  Bihlica  and  Hastings'  Dictionary  of  the  Bible. 


APPENDIX  .  235 

factors  in  a  marvellous  spiritual  transformation  of 
the  face  of  history.  To-day  we  only  study  Jewish 
apocalyptics  or  Persian  ideas  to  gain  some  reflected 
light  on  conceptions  that  were  unified  in  the  alembic 
of  a  great  spirit  in  the  history  of  man,  through  whose 
power  alone  these  conceptions  have  survived  and 
fiave  vital  interest  for  us. 

Doubtless  the  writers  of  the  synoptic  records,  who 
had  grown  up  and  were  steeped  in  the  atmosphere  of 
Jewish  Messianic  hopes  and  apocalyptic  eschato- 
logical  ideas,  unconsciously  coloured  many  of  our 
Lord's  saying  with  more  vivid  hues  of  the  new  aeon. 
Perhaps  such  sayings  as  "Verily  I  say  unto  you, 
there  be  some  of  them  that  stand  here,  which  shall 
in  no  wise  taste  of  death,  till  they  see  the  Son  of  Man 
coming  in  his  Kingdom"  (Matt.  16 :  28 ;  Mark  9:1; 
Luke  9:27;  compare  Matt.  10:23)  rest  on  a 
misapprehension  as  to  meaning  and  context  of  an 
utterance  of  the  Master  in  which  he  may  have 
promised  to  those  who  accepted  and  stood  by  him 
in  the  great  crisis,  that  they  were  thereby  already 
passed  from  death  into  life  and,  whatever  might 
happen  to  their  bodies,  their  souls  were  secure  in  the 
heavenly  or  spiritual  order  which  transcended 
the  present  earthly  state.  The  famous  saying, 
*'The  Kingdom  of  God  cometh  not  with  observation : 
neither  shall  one  say,  Lo  here !  or  There !  for  lo, 
the  Kingdom  of  God  is  within  (or  in  the  midst  of) 
you"  (Luke  17 :  20,  21),  bears  out  this  interpretation. 


236      JESUS   CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF   TO-DAY 

Noteworthy  is  the  fact  that  Jesus  always  responded 
to  those  who  asked  for  the  immediate  coming  of  the 
Kingdom  in  all  its  fulness  not  by  any  declaration 
as  to  the  precise  time  or  manner  of  its  appear- 
ance, but  by  an  exhortation  to  earnest  endeavour 
and  unceasing  watchfulness.  Compare  Luke  19: 
11-28,  etc.  Perhaps,  too,  such  passages  as  Mark 
13:26  and  Luke  21:27,  "And  then  shall  they  see 
the  Son  of  Man  coming  in  clouds  with  great  power 
and  glory, "  with  their  contexts  so  vividly  descriptive 
of  tribulation  and  suffering,  of  social  confusion  and 
natural  catastrophes,  are  apocalyptic  accretions  or 
applications  of  current  Jewish  apocalyptic  sayings, 
springing  up  in  the  disciples'  minds  from  misunder- 
stood sayings  of  the  Master.  Perhaps  such  pas- 
sages as  Matt.  24: 27-30  took  their  present  form  in 
some  such  manner.  But  when  due  allowance  has 
been  made  for  the  sources  of  the  imagery  and 
details  as  to  times  and  signs  in  all  such  passages, 
it  remains  unquestionable  that  these  passages  must 
rest  on  genuine  sayings  in  which  Jesus  Christ  him- 
self announced  his  confidence  in  a  coming  judgment 
and  a  coming  vindication  of  the  truth  of  his  message 
and  of  his  inescapable  claim  to  the  allegiance  of  men. 
The  prominence  of  the  eschatological  element  in  the 
gospels  is  inexplicable  unless  our  Lord  himself 
regarded  the  fuller  and  explicit  advent  of  the 
Kingdom  as  a  crisis  which  transcended  all  worldly 
affairs,  unless  he  held  that  its  coming  would  be 
sudden  and  with  power  and  that  he  himself  would  be 


APPENDIX  237 

recognized  as  its  herald  or  Messiah.  He  looked  to 
the  Heavenly  Father,  on  whom  he  always  relied,  for 
the  installation  of  this  power,  and  because  he 
identified  his  own  will  so  completely  with  that  of  the 
Father,  he  saw  in  the  full  appearance  of  the  King- 
dom the  final  fulfilment  of  his  work  and  the  expUcit 
recognition  of  his  person.  Do  these  considerations 
involve  the  admission  that  his  ethical  teachings  are 
irrelevant  to  the  life  of  man  in  human  society  now 
and  throughout  the  intervening  years  since  his  day 
on  earth?  This  question  has  been  in  chief  part 
answered  by  the  whole  argument  of  the  previous 
work.  If  there  is  in  the  gospels  a  body  of  teaching 
of  obvious  pertinency  to  the  problems  of  the  common 
human  life,  then  Jesus'  gospel  is  no  mere  system  of 
eschatology,  although  the  eschatological  element 
is  a  prominent  feature  of  it.  Moreover,  is  not  an 
eschatological  element  bound  up  with  every  deep 
moral  and  religious  faith?  A  great  moral  and 
spiritual  leader  must  believe  in  the  fulfilment  of 
his  aims.  Without  the  faith  that  God  —  the  Ruler 
of  all  things  —  is  with  him  his  teaching  would  have 
no  moral  and  religious  dynamic.  It  would  fall  flat 
as  a  mere  philosopheme.  The  belief  in  the  coming 
of  his  Kingdom  with  power  and  the  confident  procla- 
mation of  the  fulfilment  of  his  aims  and  the  con- 
summation of  his  work  was  inevitable.  This  faith 
in  the  ultimate  cosmic  victory  of  the  spiritual  order 
which  he  announces  and  inaugurates  is  an  essential 
and  inalienable  element  of  Jesus'  personal  con- 
sciousness. 


22,S      JESUS   CHRIST    AND    CIVILIZATION   OF    TO-DAY 

Must  it  not  be  always  so  ?  Does  not  a  vital  moral 
faith  always  involve  the  confidence  in  the  triumph 
of  its  principles?  Would  not  a  moral  principle 
however  exalted,  a  spiritual  insight  however  penetrat- 
ing, fall  nerveless  to  the  ground  unless  sustained  and 
borne  aloft  on  the  wings  of  a  burning  certainty  of 
ultimate  victory?  Even  Kant,  cool  philosopher 
though  he  was,  looked  forward  with  faith  to  the  full 
realization  of  his  moral  ideas  through  the  establish- 
ment of  everlasting  peace  on  earth.  Faith  in  its 
ultimate  victory  and  perfect  fulfilment  is  of  the  very 
life-blood  of  ethical  and  spiritual  conviction. 

We  may,  and  indeed  must,  interpret  this  consum- 
mation in  other  terms  and  with  other  imagery  than 
those  of  the  gospels;  but  if  we  accept  the  moral 
teaching  of  Christ  with  its  tremendous  issues  for 
human  life  we  must,  too,  assume  and  heartily  believe 
in  a  consummation^  a  final  goal  which  shall  be  reached 
and  which  is  ever  being  reached  through  crises  in 
the  individual  life  and  in  history. 

The  ruthless  earnestness,  the  heroic  seriousness, 
with  which  men  are  challenged  to  seek  first  the 
Kingdom  of  God  and  its  righteousness,  to  sell  all  they 
have,  to  let  the  dead  bury  their  dead,  to  hate  even 
father  and  mother,  arise  from  a  Divine  Soul  that 
calls  the  soul  of  man  to  awake  from  its  lethargy,  calls 
it  out  of  the  stagnant  shallows  of  mere  custom  and 
worldly  convention  to  embark  on  the  deeps  of  the 
spiritual  voyage  of  self-discovery,  calls  the  soul  at  all 
costs  and  at  all  hazards  to  find  itself  in  God.    Sud- 


APPENDIX  239 

denly  and  with  power  the  Kingdom  of  God  —  the 
realm  of  the  spiritual  order  —  comes  to  him  who 
manfully  faces  the  tremendous  and  fateful  issues  of 
his  spiritual  being,  who  puts  aside  all  hindrances 
that  he  may  seek  and  find  the  absolute  righteousness 
and  joy  of  the  Heavenly  Father.  Yes,  Jesus  did 
demand  that  men  should  pause  and  even  turn  away 
from  the  ordinary  cares  and  affairs  of  life.  He  saw 
that  these  things  often  keep  a  man  from  finding  his 
own  soul.^  The  obligations  laid  upon  the  soul  of 
man  by  him  often  seem  superhuman  and  beyond  the 
power  of  ordinary  humanity.  To  turn  away  from 
or  stop  short  in  the  career  of  the  world,  to  face  inner 
conflict,  to  make  heroic  choices  and  sacrifices,  to 
seek  iirst  the  Kingdom  —  these  things  Jesus  de- 
mands of  all.  But  it  is  because  there  resides  in  man 
the  possibility  of  a  new  humanity,  —  of  a  spiritual 
''superman,"  who  is  born  not  of  caprice  and  wilful 
assertion  but  of  absolute  devotion  to  service,  of 
unstinted  forgiveness  and  love  for  man  and  God,  that 
Jesus  makes  these  heroic  demands.  The  Kingdom 
of  God  comes  with  power  wherever  in  the  individual 
there  is  bom,  through  the  heroic  deeds  of  spiritual 
faith,  the  "  superhuman"  consciousness  of  the  absolute 
supremacy  of  Jesus'  ideal  and  of  its  power  to  Hft 
humanity  up  to  higher  levels  of  insight,  of  spiritual 
life  and  deed. 
Those  who  stress  the  eschatological  element  in  the 

*  He  spoke  directly  to  disciples  who  must  face  with  him  the 
great  crisis. 


240      JESUS   CHRIST    AND   CIVILIZATION   OF    TO-DAY 

teaching  of  Jesus  often  exaggerate  it.*  But,  to 
whomsoever  is  in  earnest  with  that  teaching  and  that 
life,  it  becomes  a  necessity  of  faith.  His  supremacy 
as  a  spiritual  master  means  that  he  has  a  cosmic 
authority  and  that  his  principles  can  and  will  pre- 
vail. 

And  may  one  not  even  venture  to  suggest  from  this 
standpoint  of  faith  that,  since  the  ethical  princi- 
ples of  Jesus  are  supremely  valid,  he  is  judge 
not  only  of  the  individual  Hfe  but  of  the  world? 
May  it  not  be  said  that,  in  the  terrible  social  and 
moral  crises,  through  which  the  world  makes  pro- 
gress slowly,  his  Kingdom  ever  comes  with  power? 
In  every  fresh  social  crisis,  through  the  welter  of 
suffering  and  bloodshed,  of  rapine  and  flame, 
there  sounds  in  clearer  tones  the  voice  of  moral 
justice ;  and  when  the  smoke  has  cleared  above  the 
ruins,  men  know  that  had  the  principles  of  Jesus  been 

^E.g.  J.  Weiss  in  his  Die  Lehre  vom  Reiche  Gottes  so  one- 
sidedly  emphasizes  the  eschatological  element  that  he  is  driven  to 
assert  that  there  is  nothing  novel  in  the  ethics  of  Christ  but  that 
the  source  of  his  influence  was  just  the  faith-enkindling  power  of  a 
supreme  religious  genius.  From  this  standpoint  Jesus  was  no  teacher 
and  the  specific  import  of  his  parables  and  sayings  are  purely 
eschatological.  They  contain  no  social  gospel  and  the  individual 
is  enjoined  to  practise  neighbour-love,  etc.,  simply  to  save  himself,  at 
the  impending  final  judgment,  into  the  reign  of  perfect  blessedness. 
This  view  is  a  great  and  very  one-sided  exaggeration.  A  similar 
view  is  held  in  somewhat  less  one-sided  form  by  W.  Bousset,  Das 
Fetch  Gottes  in  der  Predigt  Jesu,  in  Theologische  Rundschau,  Vol.  V., 
pp.  397-407  and  437-449.  On  this  and  cognate  questions  a  tem- 
perate and  sound  attitude  is  that  of  W.  Sanday  in  his  Outlines  of 
the  Life  of  Christ. 


APPENDIX  241 

followed,  this  crisis  would  not  have  come.  Every 
great  historical  struggle  is  a  step  on  the  road  toward 
the  fuller  coming  of  his  Kingdom.  The  miseries 
of  the  Middle  Ages,  the  Thirty  Years'  War,  the 
French  Revolution,  the  present  crisis  in  Russia, 
are  salient  instances  in  social  life  of  the  working  out  of 
moral  judgments  —  crises  through  which  the  King- 
dom of  Righteousness  comes  with  terrible  power.  If 
mankind  will  not  otherwise  hearken,  then  they  must 
be  so  judged.  The  reign  of  righteousness  must 
come  with  suffering  and  judgment  before  it  can 
blossom  in  love  and  peace. 

The  superficial  acceptance  of  the  theory  of  evolu- 
tion has  bhnded  the  eyes  of  this  generation  to  the 
cataclysmic  character  of  historical  movements  and 
fostered  a  superficial  optimism  of  ''progress"  so- 
called.  In  truth  every  great  moral  advance  of  man- 
kind has  been  won  in  blood  and  flame  and  tears. 
The  Kingdom  of  the  spirit  comes  with  power,  but 
in  conflict  and  suffering.  Mankind  grows  very 
slowly  more  rational  and  moral,  its  rulers  often  more 
slowly  than  its  masses.  But  the  time  when  "the 
war  drum  throbs  no  longer  and  the  battle  flag  is 
furled"  is  perhaps  measurably  nearer.  Through 
crises  and  suffering  the  Kingdom  comes,  and  per- 
haps with  each  crisis  more  fully ;  the  forces  of  discord 
are  still  abroad  and  doubtless  will  bring  fresh  con- 
flicts and  further  judgments.  We  in  the  United 
States  to-day  may  be  walking  on  the  crust  which  con- 
ceals a  volcanic  eruption  of  the  forces  of  those  who 


242      JESUS   CHRIST   AND   CIVILIZATION   OF  TO-DAY 

have  not  against  those  who  have.  But,  if  the  King- 
dom of  justice  and  love  comes  first  with  power  in  the 
hearts  of  many  individuals,  it  will  be  saved  from 
coming  with  blood  and  ruin  as  in  former  days  and  as 
it  is  even  now  coming  in  Russia. 

Perhaps  these  remarks  will  have  illustrated  what 
I  mean  by  saying  that  the  eschatological  element, 
the  faith  in  a  consummation,  which  is  at  the  same 
time  a  judgment  of  the  existing  order,  is  of  necessity 
part  and  parcel  of  the  ethical  teachings  of  Christ 
and  that  the  recognition  thereof,  so  far  from  destroy- 
ing the  relevancy  of  his  teaching  to  the  life  of  civiliza- 
tion to-day,  a  thousandfold  enhances  that  relevancy. 
If  the  principles  of  Jesus  Christ  are  absolutely 
supreme,  then  his  Kingdom  must  come  both  to  the 
individual  and  the  world.  The  only  alternative  to 
this  assumption  is  a  moral  indifference  and  pessi- 
mism. 


INDEX  TO  NAMES  AND  SUBJECTS 


Ameer  AH,  Syed,  i88,  190. 
Aristotle,  58. 

Art  and  Spiritual  Life,  68    69  flf. 
Augustine,  St.,  8,  220. 

Baldwin,  J.  M.,  181  n. 

Beal,  S.,  199  n. 

Birth,  new,  in  individual,  86. 

Bousset,  W.,  185  n.,  231  n.,  234  n., 
240  n. 

Brahma,  191  n. 

Brahmanism,  192. 

Browning,  60,  61,  62,  79. 

Buddha,  183,  190  fif.;  — ,  Socrates, 
and  Christ,  59, 

Buddhism,  and  Christianity,  190 
ff.;  — ,  Chinese,  199  ff.;  —  in 
Thibet,  Nepal,  Ceylon,  Burma, 
198;  — ,  Japanese,  202  ff.;  — 
and  social  progress,  211  ff. 

Caird,  E.,  141  n. 

Chantapie  de  la  Saussaye,  197  n., 

199  n. 
Character  and  Heredity,  43  ff. 
Charles,  136,  229  n. 
Cheynes'     Encyclopcedia    Biblica, 

234  n. 
Class,  G.,  141  n. 
Compensation,  Jesus'  doctrine  of, 

IIS-  _ 
Confucianism,  200. 
Conservative  school,  17. 
Critical  school,  17  ff. 

Dolman,  C,  230  n. 

Darwinian  theory,  3. 

Demoniacal  possession,  27. 

Descartes,  8,  58. 

Determinism  in  conduct,  36,  37  fif. 


Deussen,  P.,  192  n. 

Dhy^na,  207. 

Douglas,  R.  K.,  200  n.  i  and  2. 

Dualism  in  Ethics,  5,  7  ff.,  7  n., 

24. 
Driver,  230  n. 

Eliot,  George,  128. 

Enoch,  Book  of,  229  n.,  231  n. 

Epicureans,  167  ff. 

Eschatology    of    Jesus,    225    £f., 

235  S.;  —  and  the  activities  of 

civilization,  225-226,  238  ff. 
Ethical     Systems,     influence     of 

other,    compared   with   that  of 

Jesus,  166  ff.,  175  ff. 
Ethics  and  Immortality,  129  fif. 
Eucken,  Rudolf,  109,  141  n. 
Evil,  Moral,  as  treated  by  Jesus, 

157  ff.;  —  and  the  individual 

will,  159  ff. 
Evil,  physical,  26  ff. 

Faith,  180. 

Faith  in  God  and  Jesus'  influence, 

150  ff. 

Fielding,  H.,  198  n. 

Forgiveness,  108. 

Freedom,  consciousness  of,  and 
determinism,  37  ff.;  — ,  reality 
of,  44  ff.;  — ,  Jesus'  appeal  to, 
47 ;  — ,  limitations  of,  50  ff. ;  — , 
actual,  nature  of,  52  ff.;  —  and 
supreme  spiritual  life,  54. 

French  Revolution,  241. 

God,  as  Ethical  Goodness  and 
Love,  124  ff.;  God,  Idea  of, 
139  ff.;  —  as  unity  of  the  uni- 
verse,  141  ff.;    —  as  unity  of 


243 


244 


INDEX    TO    NAMES    AND    SUBJECTS 


experience,  143  £f.;  —  as  world- 
consciousness,  144;  —  as  ethical 
purpose,  147  ff. ;  —  as  moral 
order  of  the  universe,  149  ff. ;  — , 
Jesus'  idea  of,  150  ff. ;  — ,  faith 
in,  as  due  to  influence  of  Jesus' 
personality,  150  ff. 

Gospels,  dates  of,  and  authenticity 
of  Jesus'  teaching,  9  ff. 

Gotama,  see  Buddha. 

Griffis,  W.  E.,  203  n.,  205  n. 

Gulick,  S.  L.,  208  n. 

Hastings'  Dictionary  of  the  Bible, 

23^  n.,  234  n. 
Hegel,  181. 
Herder,  181. 

Hindu  metaphysics,  191-192  n. 
Humanity  and  Social  Service,  104; 

—  and  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven, 
117;  — ,  faith  in  ideal,  82  ff. 

Huxley,  Thomas  H.,  25. 

Immortality,  and  Ethics,  129;  — , 
belief  in,  as  judgment  of  value, 
129;  — ,  Jesus  on,  129,  133  ff. 

Imperfections  of  Life,  120  ff.;  — ■ 
and  immortaUty,  127  ff. 

Individual,  place  of,  among  the 
Greeks,  56;  — ,  place  of,  among 
the  Hebrews,  56  ff.;  — ,  moral 
worth  of,  56  ff.,  62,  108,  115  ff.; 

—  and  the  Protestant  reformers, 
58 ;  — ,  nature  of,  63  ff . ;  —  and 
art,  68  ff.;  —  and  over-in- 
dividual Ufe,  70;  — ,  Jesus  and, 
70  ff . ;  — ,  spiritual  life  in,  child- 
like quality  of,  74,  75. 

Individual  life  as  social,  109  ff. 

Individual  spiritual  life,  inward- 
ness of,  75,  76;  — ,  disinterested- 
ness of,  76  ff.;  — ,  rewards  of, 
77  ff.; — ,  inner  integrity  of,  79 
ff.;  — ,  reality  as  quality  of,  82. 

Individual  will  and  moral  evil, 
159  ff. 

Individuality,  and  impulse,  64;  — 
and  egoism,  65;  —  and 
Nietzsche,  67,  68. 


Jesus,  personality  of,  historical 
witnesses  to  reahty  of,  9  ff.;  — 
and  the  three  stages  of  life,  29; 

—  and  nature,  29  ff . ;  —  appeal 
to  freedom  and  accountabihty, 
47  ff.;  —  and  the  heart  of  man, 
49  ff.,  53;  —  and  the  Publican, 
51 ;  —  and  the  Pharisee,  51 ;  — 
and  the  individual  soul,  70  ff.; 

—  and  the  supreme  end  of  life, 
73  ff. ;  —  and  spiritual  Hfe  in 
the  individual,  74  ff. ;  —  tests 
the  will  of  man,  84;  — ,  social 
teaching  of,  95  ff.;  —  on  mar- 
riage, 95;  —  and  the  current 
Messianic  ideal,  96  ff.,  98  ff.; 

—  teaching,  social  effects  of, 
100. 

Jesus'  principles  of  social  life, 
103  ff.,  115  ff. ;  — ,  significance 
of  his  death,  11 1  ff. ;  — ,  social 
mysticism  of,  113  ff.;  —  doc- 
trine of  compensation,  115;  — 
idea  of  God,  150  ff.;  — ,  in- 
fluence of  his  personality  in 
arousing  faith  in  God,  150  ff.; 
— ,  treatment  of  moral  evil  by, 
157  ff.;  — ,  influence  of,  com- 
pared with  ethical  systems,  166 
ff.,  175  ff.;  —  and  the  Stoics, 
and  the  Epicureans,  168  ff.;  — 
and  Plato,  169  ff.;  —  and  Kant, 
176;  —  and  Mohammed,  185 
ff.;  —  and  Buddha,  193  ff.;  — 
the  Christ,  as  the  absolute  reve- 
lation of  the  spiritual  meaning 
of  human  life,  215  ff.;  —  as 
revealer,  216;  — ,  his  unique 
relation  to  God,  216  ff.;  — ,  his 
unique  God-consciousness,  218 
ff. ;  — ,  entire  harmony  of  his 
wiU  with  God's  will,  219  ff.;  — , 
relation  of  his  moral  perfection 
to  his  religious  insight,  221  ff.; 
— ,  does  he  differ  from  other 
men  in  degree  only,  or  in  kind  ? 
220;  — ,  his  ethical  unity  with 
God,  the  Father,  223  ff.;  — , 
temptation   of,    228;  — ,   Mas- 


INDEX    TO    NAMES     AND    SUBJECTS 


245 


sianic  consciousness  of,  98, 
226  ff. 

Judaism,  183. 

Judgment  and  final  triumph  of 
Jesus'  principles  as  moral  postu- 
late of  faith,  236  ff. 

Judgments  moral,  great  historical 
crises  as,  240  ff. 


Kant,  149,  176,  181. 

Karma,  195,  209  fif.;  —  and  the 

Christian    principle    of    moral 

freedom,  210. 
Kingdom   of   God,    17,   97,    226, 

234  ff. ;  — ,  see  also  under  God 

and  Jesus. 
Kingdom  of  Heaven,  88,  99  flf., 

117  ff. 
Kingdom  of  Jesus,  its  coming  in 

history,  240  fif. 
Kipling,  Rudyard,  78. 
Knox,  G.  W.,  203  n.,  207  n.  3. 
Kocheba,  Simon  bar,  97. 

Labourers  in  the  Vineyard,  para- 
ble of,  77. 

Lao-tsze,  200  ff. 

Lehmann,  Edv.,  197  n. 

Life,  critical  epochs  in,  28;  — , 
first  stage  in,  28;  — ,  second 
stage  in,  28,  29;  — ,  third  stage 
in,  29;  — ,  Jesus  and  the  three 
stages  of,  29,  30 ;  — ,  conduct  of 
the  individual,  57  ff.;  — ,  con- 
duct of  the  social,  89  ff. 

Lloyd,  A.,  205  n.,  206  n.  i. 

Love  as  motive  in  Buddhism,  and 
in  the  Gospel  of  Jesus,  211  ff. 

Mahayana,  198. 

Man  and  his  environment,  31  ff., 
35  ff- ;  — ,  the  heart  of,  35  ff .,  49. 
Manichmanism,  7. 
Marriage,  Jesus  on,  95. 
Martineau,  J.,  141  n. 
Mazdaism,  234. 
Mediaeval  ethics,  5. 
Meister  Eckhart,  215. 


Messiah,  17,  98,  226  ff. 

Messianic  consciousness  of  Jesus, 
98,  227  ff.;  — ,  see  also  Son  of 
Man. 

Messianic  Kingdom,  99  ff.,  225  ff. 

Metaphysics,  191-192  n. 

Middle  Ages,  the,  24,  241. 

Mithraism,  7. 

Modern  man,  the,  and  nature, 
25  ff. 

Mojfatt,  James,  quoted,  13-16. 

Mohammed,  185  ff.;  —  and 
Jesus,  189  ff. 

Mohammedanism,  183;  —  as  a 
moral  force  in  society  and  his- 
tory, 186  ff. 

Moral  growth  after  death,  136. 

More,  Sir  Thomas,  95,  178. 

Moses,  20,  183. 

Muir,  Sir  William,  190  n. 

Mysticism,  unsocial  and  social, 
compared,  113  ff.;  —  of  Jesus, 
a  social  and  historical  mysti- 
cism, 113  ff. 

Neoplatonism,  7  n,  8. 
Nichiren  sect,  206. 
Nietzsche,  Fr.,  3,  66,  67. 
Nirvana,  195,  196  n. 

Obligation,  significance  of  feeling 

of.  37. 
Okakura-Y oshisaburo,    207    n.    i 

and  2. 
Oldenburg,  Hermann,  190,  196  n. 

Paul,  St.,  8,  212. 

Persian  idea  of  a  Messiah,  234. 

Personality,  as  historical  cause, 
10  ff.;  — ,  unity  and  uniqueness 
of,  38  ff.,  45;  — ,  unity  of,  as 
condition  of  knowledge,  39;  — , 
unity  of,  as  condition  of  action, 
39  flf.;  —  and  social  environ- 
ment, 40  ff. ;  — ,  creative,  41  ff. ; 
—  and  psychological  analysis, 
45-47;  —  in  the  History  of 
Religion,  179  fif.-  —  and  social 
Ufe,  181  fif. 


246 


INDEX    TO    NAMES    AND    SUBJECTS 


Plato,    95,    178;    —   and   Jesus, 

169  fF. 
Protestant  reformers,  the,  58. 
Psychical  research   and  spiritual 

immortality,  131. 
Punishment  hereafter,  135  ff.;  — 

everlasting,  136  ff. 

Religion  and  Personality,  179  £f. 
Renaissance,  69. 
Reward,  eternal,  134  ff. 
Rhys-Davids,  195  n.,  196  n. 
Royce,  J.,  141  n.,  181  n.,  222  n. 
Russia,  present  conditions  in,  241. 

Samsara,  195. 

Samurai  ethics,  205. 

Sanday,  W.,  229  n.,  240  n. 

Saoshyant,  234. 

Schmidt,  N.,  18  n.,  232  n. 

Self,  see  Individual  and  Per- 
sonality, 

Self -Perfection,  ethics  of,  172. 

Service,  Jesus'  principle  of,  103  ff., 
119. 

Shinshu,  sect,  206,  208. 

Shinto,  205. 

Siebeck,  H.,  141  n. 

Sin,  124  ff. 

Smith,  A.  H.,  200  n. 

Social  ethics,  principles  of,  94. 

Social  questions,  89  ff.;  —  ethical 
aspects  of,  91  ff. 

Social  teaching  of  Jesus,  95  ff., 
103  ff.;  —  and  the  Messianic 
ideal,  96  ff. 


Socrates,  169. 

Son  of  God,  16,  224. 

Son  of  Man,  16  ff.,  229  ff. 

Spirit  and  nature,  24,  30  ff.;  — , 

Jesus'    view   of   their   relation, 

25  ff.,  29  ff. 
Stevenson,  R.  L.,  62. 
Struggle     for    existence,    the,    4, 

23- 

Talents,  parable  of  the,  8i. 
Tauler,  John,  215  n. 
Theologische  Rundschau,  240  n. 
Thirty  Years'  War,  241. 

Unjust  Steward,  parable  of,  81. 
Upanishads,  191. 
Utihtarian  Ethics,  173  ff. 

Value,  judgments  of,  129  ff. 
Vedas,  191. 

Ward,  J.,  141  n. 

Warren,  H.  C,  195  n. 

Weiss,  J.,  240  n. 

West  and  East,  213. 

Will,  freedom  of,  35  ff.,  45.  47; 

— ,   Jesus'   severe    tests  of,   84 

ff. 
Williams,  S.  Wells,  200  n. 
Worship  of  Divine  Perfection  as 

principle  of  justification,    124, 

126. 

Zen  sect,  206,  207. 
Zoroastriamsm,  7. 


INDEX   TO   TEXTS 


Psalms,  2,  8 229 

Isaiah,  53 231 

Ezekiel,  18  :  20 57 

Daniel,  7  :  13 229 

MATTHEW  PAGE 

i-io 227 


4     .      • 

7  •      • 

8  .     . 

9  .     . 
12 

24 

27,  28 

29 

42 

44 

45        . 

48       . 


.  .  .  27 

.  .  .  no 

.  .  .  71 

.  .  .  no 

.  .  .  77 

.  .  .  no 

.  .  .  71 

•  133.  135 
.  .  .  104 
.     .  72,  109 

25.  73,  109 

•  .  73»  220 

•  .  •  77 
.  .  .  49 
.     .     28,  71 

.     .     .     152 

81,  163 

.     .     .       81 

.     .     .    152 

81,  98,  220 
.     .     .      18 

48,  84,  226 
.     .     •    235 


6 : 10       ... 

6:21        ... 

6 : 22    '    .     .     . 

6:32        ... 

7:1     ...     . 

7:3     ...     . 

7:11        ... 

8:11        .     .     . 

8:20       ... 

8:22        ... 
10  :  23       ... 

10  :  28 13s,  158 

10  :  31        129 

10  :  34       48,  73 

10:41        77 

11  :  27        219,  230 

11  :  28       219 

12:8 18 

12  :  31,  32      ....      136,  221 
12:34,35 76 

13  :  15        50.  98 

13:57        98 

15  :  II        49 

15  :  19       49.  75 


MATTHEW 
16  :  13,  20 
16  :  24 
16  :  27,  28 
17:5     . 
18:3     . 
18:6    , 
18:9     . 
18  :  II 

18  :22 

19  :4-ii 


19:19 

19  :  21 

20  : 1-16 
20  :  26 

20  :  28 

21  :37 

22  :  21 
22 :  30 
22  :  32 
22  :39 

22  :45 

23  :  8,  9 
23  :  8-10 

23  :  II 
23  :  12 

23  :27 
23:37 

24  : 27-44 
24:35 

25  :  15-30 
25  :  31-46 

25  :34 

25  :40 

26  :  24 
26  :  39 
26  :  64 


MARK 

2  :28 

7:21 
247 


48 


PAGE 

100 

48 

235 
230 

74 

72 

159 
178 

108 

95 

108 

84,  104 

77 

103 

18 

230 

95 

133,  226 

152,  177 

.    108 

.      98 

•      71 

.    221 

103,  III 

103 

76 

98 

225,  236 

95,  106 

81 

134 

133 

220 

18 

220 

225 


PAGE 

72 

75 


248 


INDEX    TO    TEXTS 


MARK  PAGE 

8:34         48 

9  it 23s 

9:7 •     '230 

9  :  42 72,  136 

9  :  43,  45.  47 ^35 

10:7 221 

10:15 74 

10:17       133 

10 :  21       84 

10  :  29,  30 77 

10:43.4s      ....      103,111 

12:25       133 

12:27 152,  177 

13  :  8,  24-27 225 

13  :  26 236 

13:31       95 

14:25       230 

14  :  62       225 

LUKE  PAGE 

4  : 1-13 227 

4:18 178 

5:31     178 

6  :  20,  21 27 

6:23 77 

6  :  30 104 

6  :  45        ....        48,  49,  75 

9  :  18-21 100 

9:27       235 

9:48 74 

10  :  29       105 

":2 77 

11  :  II       129 

11:39       76 

12:5 135 

12  :  8-10 230 

12 :  14 95 

12:  IS       54 

12:34 49 

12  :  40 225 

12:48       ....    81,  136,  159 
12:51       73 

13  : 4 26,  158 

13 :  18-21 26 

13:25-30 81 

13  :  29  220 

14  :  II  103 

14:13  104 

14 :  26 48,  226 


LUKE  PAGE 

16:1-8 81 

16:25  £f 115 

17  :  10 123 

17  :  20,  21 235 

17:21       134 

17  :  24-30 225 

17  :  30       230 

18:8 230 

18  : 9-14 124 

18 :  16       74 

18:17       74 

18  :  19       221 

18  :  22       226 

19  :  11-28 236 

20:35-36 133 

20  :  44       98 

21  :  27       225,  236 

21  :  33       95 

21  :36 225 

22  :  16-18 225 

22  :  18       230 

22  :  26 Ill 

22  :  29       220 

JOHN  PAGE 

3  : 6,  7 73 

3:8 60 

5:17       76 

6  :  62        .......  230 

7:17        86 

8  :  46 221 

9:3 27 

10:10       54 

12  :  16 14 

12  :  24       112 

12  :  40       98 

13  :  31        230 

14 :  26        14 

15:5          "2 

16 :  13        14 

18  :  36       106 

20  :  17       220 

FIRST  CORINTHIANS  PAGE 

7  :  31        106 

13:00          2X2 

SECOND  CORINTHIANS  PAGE 

3:3 14 


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CHRIST 

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THE  SOCIAL  TEACHINGS  OF  JESUS 

AN   ESSAY   IN   CHRISTIAN   SOCIOLOGY 

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THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CHANGING  ORDER 

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By  NEWELL  DWIGHT  HILLIS 

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THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CHRIST  IN  MODERN  LIFE 

A  STUDY  OF  THE  NEW  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  CHURCH    IN    MODERN 
SOCIETY 

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PERSONAL  AND  IDEAL  ELEMENTS 
IN  EDUCATION 

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RECONSTRUCTION  IN  THEOLOGY 

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RATIONAL  LIVING 

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